KIKI SMITH –WORK!

RB/Arte/ SRF 52 min. /26 min. 2013-2016

American artist Kiki Smith is a pioneer of contemporary sculpture and one of the most outstanding artists of our time. She has created a multifaceted body of work that explores political and social as well as philosophical and spiritual aspects of human nature. The artist investigates the human body without fear of taboos, humiliation, or the constraints of shame, opening up the conditio humana, the human condition, for public debate. Her works tackle the subjects of age, dying and death, pain and healing, reanimation, wholeness and fragmentation, pregnancy, birth, sexuality, gender, identity, and memory. Kiki Smith’s oeuvre encompasses a variety of media in addition to sculpture, most notably drawings, etchings, and lithography, but even including books, photography, and video. She thus employs a wide range of materials to create her works, from bronze, plaster, glass, and porcelain to paper, pigment, aluminium, latex, feathers, and beeswax. Smith’s dedication to the drama of the human body, particularly the female body, is something she shares with artists such as Eva Hesse (1936–1970), Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), and Nancy Spero (1926–2009). Her inventiveness, her radical approach, and the magic of the materials she uses make Kiki Smith’s works truly unique and have influenced many upcoming artists over the years. ( Text by Petra Giloy-Hirtz)