Kiki Smith

USA

Kiki Smith (American, b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany) is recognized for her multidisciplinary practice through which she explores embodiment and the natural world. The body, mortality, regeneration, gender politics, as well as the interconnection of spirituality and the natural world are observed through a postmodern lens. Her expansive practice resonates personally and universally, manifesting in sculpture, glassmaking, printmaking, watercolor, photography, and textile, among other production methods. Drawn to the cogency of repetition in narratives and symbolic representations, much of Smith’s work is inspired by the visual culture of the past, spanning scientiGic anatomical renderings from the eighteenth century to the abject imagery of relics, memento mori, folklore, mythology, Byzantine iconography, and medieval altarpieces. Smith has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide including over 25 museum exhibitions.

Her work has been featured at Give Venice Biennales, including the 2017 edition. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2017 was awarded the title of Honorary Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Previously, Smith was recognized in 2006 by TIME Magazine as one of the “TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World.” Other awards include the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture in 2000; the 2009 Edward MacDowell Medal; the 2010 Nelson A. Rockefeller Award, Purchase College School of the Arts; the 2013 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts, conferred by Hillary Clinton; and the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center, among others.

She is an adjunct professor at NYU and Columbia University.

First published as a hand colored etching by ULAE, Sea from Pool of Tears (after Lewis Carrol), 2022 Reiteration was created by the artist with the help of Nicholas Price of Magnolia Editions in 2022

In Lewis Carroll’s “Alice Underground” Chapter 2, Pool of Tears, Alice grows larger than nine feet tall. Her head has hit the top of the ceiling. She feels sorry for her predicament and begins to cry. She meets a rabbit who drops a fan he carries. Alice fans herself and quickly becomes smaller than she was to begin with. She finds herself in a large pool of tears she created when she was large and wishes she hadn’t cried. She encounters a mouse and then an assortment of animals both natural and unnatural to the sea, that have fallen in and are all trying to find their way to the shore.

We find ourselves in this predicament, drowning in our tears and others accompanying us.

Thank you to Nicholas Price at Magnolia Editions, Larissa Goldston from ULAE, my studio assistants Hillarey Dees, Emma Thomas-Hammond, and Vincent Tiley, and Lance Fung and John Talley at Fung Collaboratives, and Pace Gallery.

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