BIOGRAPHY
Chiara Lanier Smith, known as Kiki, creates sculptures and prints centering on the body, nature, folk tales, and myths within an experimental and often collaborative practice. Born in German in 1954 to sculptor Tony Smith and opera singer Jane Smith, Kiki Smith grew up in New Jersey. She took studio classes in etching, bookbinding, and other techniques, went to art school, practiced drawing on her own, and learnt from colleagues. In the late 1970s she joined the New York-based artists’ collective Collaborative Projects, Inc.
Body parts such as cast hands and clinically rendered internal organs appeared in her work of the early 1980s. In Mammary (1988), the schematic form of breast ducts rendered in plaster and string resembles a solar system; the connection between stars and bodies was a theme that recurred throughout Smith's career. By the 1990s Smith added life-sized complete figures to her subjects. The hands of her naked and flayed Virgin Mary (1992) fall open in a gesture of benediction or supplication. Strings of beads pool around female figures like crystallized bodily fluids.
Smith worked with many printmakers, beginning with Universal Limited Art Editions in 1990. Her own face, hair, and body appeared as subjects, along with flowers, doilies, butterflies, and stars. She used a variety of techniques from potato print to aquatint, often collaged together on a mix of hand- and machine-made papers. Her works included ingeniously folded artist books. Smith undertook residencies at many institutions, including the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University.
In the late 1990s Smith turned to animal imagery, sometimes hybridizing birds and human forms. White Mammals (1998–9) consists of porcelain reliefs of taxidermied animals in a row on the floor and etchings of the same subjects on the wall. Female characters from fairy tales, myths, and other literature joined her subjects. In 1999, she collaborated with composer Margaret De Wys on Daughter, a red-caped, hirsute-faced girl figure with a soundtrack. A 2005 multimedia installation with furniture, porcelain figures, prints, and photographs that dealt with domestic activities was staged in a Venetian palazzo.
Smith’s process and grid formats were likened to the work of Eva Hesse and postminimal art. Smith’s focus on females and ‘woman’s work’ also allied her with feminist art. Some critics placed her early works within the framework of abject art; others found Catholic references and a spiritual tone in her images.
Chiara Lanier Smith, known as Kiki, creates sculptures and prints centering on the body, nature, folk tales, and myths within an experimental and often collaborative practice. Born in German in 1954 to sculptor Tony Smith and opera singer Jane Smith, Kiki Smith grew up in New Jersey. She took studio classes in etching, bookbinding, and other techniques, went to art school, practiced drawing on her own, and learnt from colleagues. In the late 1970s she joined the New York-based artists’ collective Collaborative Projects, Inc.
Body parts such as cast hands and clinically rendered internal organs appeared in her work of the early 1980s. In Mammary (1988), the schematic form of breast ducts rendered in plaster and string resembles a solar system; the connection between stars and bodies was a theme that recurred throughout Smith's career. By the 1990s Smith added life-sized complete figures to her subjects. The hands of her naked and flayed Virgin Mary (1992) fall open in a gesture of benediction or supplication. Strings of beads pool around female figures like crystallized bodily fluids.
Smith worked with many printmakers, beginning with Universal Limited Art Editions in 1990. Her own face, hair, and body appeared as subjects, along with flowers, doilies, butterflies, and stars. She used a variety of techniques from potato print to aquatint, often collaged together on a mix of hand- and machine-made papers. Her works included ingeniously folded artist books. Smith undertook residencies at many institutions, including the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University.
In the late 1990s Smith turned to animal imagery, sometimes hybridizing birds and human forms. White Mammals (1998–9) consists of porcelain reliefs of taxidermied animals in a row on the floor and etchings of the same subjects on the wall. Female characters from fairy tales, myths, and other literature joined her subjects. In 1999, she collaborated with composer Margaret De Wys on Daughter, a red-caped, hirsute-faced girl figure with a soundtrack. A 2005 multimedia installation with furniture, porcelain figures, prints, and photographs that dealt with domestic activities was staged in a Venetian palazzo.
Smith’s process and grid formats were likened to the work of Eva Hesse and postminimal art. Smith’s focus on females and ‘woman’s work’ also allied her with feminist art. Some critics placed her early works within the framework of abject art; others found Catholic references and a spiritual tone in her images.
REFERENCES
Christine Brueckner McVay. "Smith, Kiki." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web.<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T096666>.
Artwork behind title: Kiki Smith's Come Away From Her, After Lewis Carroll (detail)
Christine Brueckner McVay. "Smith, Kiki." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web.<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T096666>.
Artwork behind title: Kiki Smith's Come Away From Her, After Lewis Carroll (detail)
