"Get in Touch with Your Feminist Side..."

As a primary sculptor, Kiki Smith makes her focus in the art world with reoccurring themes of femininity, but not in traditional ways. Her first works were screen prints on dresses, skirts, and scarves and many of her creations spawned from images of the human body. Many of her screen prints depict human body parts, limbs with the flesh flayed off, or reproductive organs.

Smith is primarily known for her sculptures: perhaps her most famous is Mary Magdalene, a naked woman shown flayed and exposed to judgment. Most of Smith’s works, as previously stated, center on the idea of feminist thought. She plays with the phenomenons of birth, spirituality, and recreation. She has claimed to be very spiritual and her father, the renowned artist Tony Smith, was raised by Jesuits, further exemplifying Kiki Smith’s interest and devotion.

                            (Mary Magdelene, 1994)

Since the 1980s, she had developed a myriad of works in print, sculpture, installations, and other media. In her Blue Prints series during the 90s, she created a number of works using the aquatint process. Aquatinting is a way of simulating different tones of color on an etching plate. Once finished, the area around the drawing takes on a glowing hue. Smith’s Virgin with Dove was achieved using this process and is considered a prime example of contemporary Marian art, art designed to give praise to the Virgin Mary.

 (Virgin with Dove, 1999)

Smith has also created a plethora of self-portraits and nature works. She stated that her art is traditional, further elaborating;

I miss radically—in my own work and in the art world. The art world seems very product-dominated, and I’m a product maker. But it’s not as interesting an art world now. It’s not as determined by artists themselves. When I first came to New York you really had to work at it. It wasn’t given to you. I miss that a little bit. I would like to be more outside of things, but it’s just not my personality at all.