Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith:  A Gathering 1980--2005, installation view Walker Center for the Arts.

Born in 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany, lives and works in New York.
Born to opera singer and actress Jane Smith and architect and abstract sculptor Tony Smith, Kiki grew up in New Jersey surrounded by creative people and was exposed to many art practices. Her earliest works use the human body and its functions as a point of departure, using diverse materials—handmade paper, papier-mache, glass, plaster, wax, and bronze, to articulate unique visions of the body, from clinical to primal. During the 1990s Smith began to engage with themes from literature and history, reimagining biblical and mythological characters in corporeality. Smith’s focus on anonymous feminine forms rather than particular personalities led her to examine female archetypes in religion, mythology, and folklore. In some cases she sought unexpected variations on familiar themes. Virgin Mary (1992), for instance, renders the Madonna flayed skinless like an anatomical model, with muscles exposed.