Kiki Smith
Kiki Smith
Kiki Smithis a West German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS, gender and race, while recent works have depicted the human condition in relationship to nature. Smith lives and works in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth18 January 1954
CityNuremberg, Germany
CountryUnited States of America
Source of inspiration. The MAK is a museum that has had a profound effect on me as an artist and art viewer.
My work life makes much less sense now than 20 years ago. It's Humpty-Dumpty-like in a way; I can't put the pieces back together.
I didn't start to be an artist myself until I was 24.
Prior to my father's death, I was having a hard time committing to a career as an artist, but that's not because of who he was - it was because of who I am. It's true, though, that I felt I shouldn't compete with him, and that those feelings went away after he died.
It's fun, in a way, to explore what's risky in one's life.
I like Betsy Ross as a model, too, the quilting bee, sitting around with your friends making art, asking what they think, so that you get the benefit of everyone's opinions and so it's not just about you in your you-dom.
Many people don't have relationships to their siblings in adulthood, or they have superficial ones. It's sort of unfashionable, particularly in America, to be close to your family.
I think a lot of making art is listening to yourself.
I really love printmaking. It’s like a mystery and you’re trying to figure out how to rein it in.
I got into animals by drawing hair follicles. I liked drawing hair, and from that I got into feathers and fur, then into images of animals. The patterning is the same, but the proportions of the body change from one animal to the next. A lot of it is just geometry and consciousness.
If you stick to your work it will take care of you somehow.
My iPhone has changed my life - I spend hours taking photos of the sidewalk as I walk down the street. I like the casualness, that it's low-resolution.
The hardest thing is remembering that you have some complicity in the things that happen to you in your life.
As a child I prayed that my calling be revealed - but not with expectation and not with a destination. I became an artist because I didn't know what to do and I thought it was really fun to make things.