Artist Biennial

Kiki Smith

1954–

135 works in the collection 24 exhibitions at the Whitney

Biography

Since the 1980s Kiki Smith has focused her art on the human body, creating transgressive, often disturbing works that deal with themes related to the life cycle—reproduction, decay, mortality, and regeneration—as well as the role of women in society. Smith’s work often aims to undermine customary modes of perceiving the human body. As she remarked, “Most of the functions of the body are hidden or separated from society; . . . we separate our bodies from our lives.” In her hand-wrought sculptures Smith explores corporeal textures and functions using nontraditional materials such as hair, latex, beeswax, glass, and porcelain. Untitled, one of Smith’s earliest large-scale wax sculptures, consists of two life-sized figures, a man and a woman, suspended from metal poles as though exhibited in a natural history museum or other site of public display. Although life-giving secretions—milk and semen—drip from the woman and man, respectively, the two figures hang lifelessly, the areas of red-tinted wax gruesomely visible beneath the outer layers of their skin suggesting internal damage or dissolution.

Often, Smith fuses her interest in the body with themes drawn from the Bible and ancient mythology, as in Pieta. This drawing, a self-portrait of the artist holding her deceased cat Ginzer, is based on Christian depictions of the grieving Virgin Mary cradling the dead Christ in her arms—a subject known as the pietà, from the Italian word for pity or devotion. Here, Smith uses the familiar art-historical representation to memorialize her own grief and experience of loss. The delicate, slightly crinkled Nepalese paper on which the drawing is rendered emphasizes the fragility of life and the intimate bond between the artist and her beloved pet.