biography
Kiki Smith was born in 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany. She lives and works in New York.
Smith is a New York-based artist and a leading figure in the international art world. The human form, especially the female body, became central to her work in the 1980s. She began to focus on the themes of loss and death through her depiction of the body’s internal components, especially organs, cellular structures and the nervous system. The evacuation of these physiological components from the body presented anxieties surrounding the maternal body and the notion of the body as a receptacle for incorporeal components such as knowledge, belief and storytelling. By exposing its internal structures, Smith portrays the dichotomy between the psychological and physiological spheres of the body. In recent years, Smith’s work has evolved to incorporate animals, domestic objects and narrative tropes from classical mythology and folk tales. Her career, spanning more than three decades, is characterized by great experimentation with techniques and materials: she employs a wide-range of non-traditional materials ranging from hair and latex to beeswax and gold to a diverse body of media that includes painting, photography, bookmaking, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking.
Kiki Smith was born in 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany. She lives and works in New York.
Smith is a New York-based artist and a leading figure in the international art world. The human form, especially the female body, became central to her work in the 1980s. She began to focus on the themes of loss and death through her depiction of the body’s internal components, especially organs, cellular structures and the nervous system. The evacuation of these physiological components from the body presented anxieties surrounding the maternal body and the notion of the body as a receptacle for incorporeal components such as knowledge, belief and storytelling. By exposing its internal structures, Smith portrays the dichotomy between the psychological and physiological spheres of the body. In recent years, Smith’s work has evolved to incorporate animals, domestic objects and narrative tropes from classical mythology and folk tales. Her career, spanning more than three decades, is characterized by great experimentation with techniques and materials: she employs a wide-range of non-traditional materials ranging from hair and latex to beeswax and gold to a diverse body of media that includes painting, photography, bookmaking, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking.
Kiki Smith select solo exhibitions include: Kiki Smith: Free Fall, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2022); Kiki Smith: From the Creek, Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico (2022); Inner Bodies, Fondation Thalie, Brussels (2022); Kiki Smith. Hearing You with My Eyes, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2020); Kiki Smith, Monnaie de Paris, Paris (2019); Kiki Smith: Procession originated at the Haus der Kunst, Munich and traveled to the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland and the Belvedere, Vienna (2018); Musée d’Art Moderne, Saint Etienne (2013); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2009); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005); Museum of Modern Art in New York (2003).
Her work has been included in group exhibitions such as: Nian Nian - The Power and Agency of Animal Forms, Deji Art Museum of Jiangsu, Nanjing (2023); Feminine power: the divine to the demonic, The British Museum, London (2022); Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy: Mare Nostrum, Venice Biennale, Complex of the Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Penitenti Fondamenta Cannaregio, Venice (2019); The Moon From Inner Worlds to Outer Space, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk and traveled to Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo (2019); Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now), The Met Breuer, New York (2018); The American Dream: Pop to the Present, British Museum, London and traveled to Fondation Custodia, Paris, France (2018).
Smith’s works are included in numerous prominent museum collections, such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Tate Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Her work has been included in five Venice Biennales (2019, 2017, 2009, 2005, 1993).
gallery exhibitions
images
public exhibitions
press
Scoprire Kiki Smith a Milano
Interviews with Raffaella Cortese, Gabi Scardi and Roberto Pinto.
ArtsLife
February 17, 2023
I Myself Have Seen It: Photography and Kiki Smith, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary art, Arizona
Aesthetica
March 30, 2012
publications
video
When fantasy meets popular folklore: Artist Kiki Smith’s work on display in Paris
2019
Video by France24 on the occasion of Kiki Smith's solo exhibition at Le Monnaie de Paris – 11 Conti
I Make Things to Experience the Process
2014
TateShots
