Raffaella Cortese is pleased to present the first Italian exhibition of the American artist Kiki Smith, world-wide known from the 80s for her research on body, reframed in its social, cultural, sexual and religious meanings and as seat of feelings and emotions.

From the mid-90s the artist’s interest has extended from human body to what surrounds it: cosmos, environmental phenomena and animal life, represented through a free and easy use of materials as bronze, papier-mâché, glass, baked clay and several techniques as sculpture, photography, drawing and engraving. The artist uses these elements in order to give shape to her poetical world and to tell us of dreams and nightmares of our age, often finding inspiration in myths and nature, in fairy and sirens tales and in religious iconography. Her latest installations reveal the entire physicality and in the meantime the fragility of every living being.

For her first appointment in Milan, Kiki Smith presents works created especially for the exhibition. The installation “Sirens”, made of six bronze pieces in various sizes, is displayed in the first room, while in the second one the sculpture “Eve” is shown together with another bronze piece, “Calling”, and three drawings. By the passage, 7 drawings on paper titled “Double Heads” will bring us back again to the human sphere, after an immersion in a magic and mythologic world. In the Gallery Project Room a new photographic series about the female body is presented.