Awareness Post - Kiki Smith

Cathedral (2013)

Evening Star (2023)

Litter (1999)

Kiki Smith is a German-American artist born in 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany and raised in South Orange, New Jersey. As the daughter of a professional sculptor, art came naturally to her. She attended the Hartford Art School at University of Hartford, but after her third semester, she dropped out and began freelance work, teaching herself art techniques in the process. In her decades-long career, her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, including MoMA in New York City. She is almost entirely self-made, something I can relate to after spending so much time developing my own style.

Initially, her work focused on mortality and the human body, particularly the depiction of taboo aspects of being human. What I'm more focused on, however, is her body of work started in the mid 1990's surrounding the animal kingdom. The raw, textured backgrounds in "Cathedral" and the repetition in "Evening Star" are exactly what I'm going for with my acrylic pieces, and I can surely take a lot from the depictions of instinct and ferocity as I delve more into art featuring my cats and my coyote mask in my personal body of work. "Litter" especially gives me a strong sense of warmth and nostalgia because it reminds me of the mother cat I fostered and of older pictures of cats. I think I'd like to try and capture that feeling in my own.

She does not have a personal website, but a showcase of her work can be found here: https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/kiki-smith/