Kiki smith biography artwork

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In Jewish tradition, Lilith, the first wife of Adam shunned the world of male dominance to reside within the demon realm. Both figures slump forward, eyes closed, hanging limply and puppet-like, as if dead.

Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith (born January 18, 1954) is a West German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration.

Her sculpted female figures sometimes look unfinished, depicted without skin, or deformed or disfigured in some way. Life, death, and resurrection are thematic signposts in many of Smith’s installations and sculptures. For the most part Smith is self-taught as an artist. The stark contrast of ink against pale ground strengthens the aura of defenselessness, while the detailed linear treatment and braiding of the muscles highlights the unnatural pose.

The pair was rendered without background imagery to assign a specific context, but the wrinkled and patched paper segments resemble bed sheets and a pillow. This training in formalist systems, combined with her upbringing in the Catholic Church, would later resurface in Smith’s evocative sculptures, drawings, and prints. Smith had considerable experience in printmaking, having experimented with monotype, and screen methods since the late 1970s.

Head turned to the side, her startlingly intelligent, blue glass eyes peer over her shoulder, belying her feral posture and the dull brown finish of her face. In this way she brought further awareness to the AIDS crisis, while simultaneously dealing with the loss of her sister and many friends to the disease.

The wolf in Smith's art is as detailed and naturalistic as her human figures, but it also symbolizes the wild woman, or 'she-wolf'.

Thus, her artworks may be understood on a multiplicity of levels - as highly detailed naturalistic figures, exploration of overlapping figures from different mythologies/religions, and as feminist dialogue inspiring self-acceptance.

Other works by Smith depict woman as feral, responding to her most basic animal nature. When printed, this technique results in a halo around the Virgin Mary and Holy Spirit.

Mary Magdelene (1994), a sculpture made of silicon bronze and forged steel, is an example of Smith's non-traditional use of the female nude.

Portrayed communing with a wolf, taking shelter with its pelt, and being born from its womb, Smith’s character of Genevieve embodies the complex, symbolic relationships between humans and animals.

Smith received the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture in 2000, the Athena Award for Excellence in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005, the fiftieth Edward MacDowell Medal from the MacDowell Colony in 2009, and has participated in the Whitney Biennial three times in the past decade.

The figure is without skin everywhere but her face, breasts and the area surrounding her navel.

Smith printed the image in black ink on 36 attached sheets of handmade Thai paper.

MoMA and the Whitney Museum both have extensive collections of Smith's prints.

Lilith is a study of contrasts. When Smith was still an infant her family moved back to the United States to live in her father's childhood home in South Orange, New Jersey.

She strides forth a goddess, a holy woman, and the archetype of La Loba, the wild woman, completely unafraid. Catholicism is always involved in physical manifestations of [spiritual] conditions, always taking inanimate objects and attributing meaning to them.