Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith

b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany
lives in New York

Kiki Smith is a German-American artist who studied for a time at the Hartford Art School in Connecticut before moving to New York, where she has been based for forty years. Her early work treats such subjects as the AIDS epidemic and gender. More recently, she has turned her attention toward the relationship of the human condition to nature, specifically feminine subjects. Her practice includes the use of tattoo, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, textiles, and photography to create figural representations that explore themes of mortality, sexuality, and the human body and bodily fluids. Smith has been featured three times in the Whitney Biennial, New York, and five times in the Venice Biennale. Among other venues, her work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her print work is found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Smith has received numerous awards and honors for her work, such as the International Sculpture Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2016) and the US Department of State’s Medal of Arts (2012). She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Kiki Smith, Quiver, 2018 (detail). Bronze with gold and silver leaf; figure: 67 × 18 ¼ × 1 inches; installation: dimensions variable. Courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo by Melissa Goodwin