Kiki Smith

Germany, 1957.

Kiki Smith has been known since the 1980s for her multidisciplinary work that explores embodiment and the natural world. She uses a broad variety of materials to continuously expand and evolve a body of work that includes sculpture, printmaking, photography, drawing, and textiles.

Smith has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide including over 25 museum exhibitions. Her work has been featured at five Venice Biennales, including the 2017 edition. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2017 was awarded the title of Honorary Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Previously, Smith was recognized in 2006 by TIME Magazine as one of the “TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World.” Other awards include the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture in 2000; the 2009 Edward MacDowell Medal; the 2010 Nelson A. Rockefeller Award, Purchase College School of the Arts; the 2013 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts, conferred by Hillary Clinton; and the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center, among others.

Smith’s works are included in numerous prominent museum collections, such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Tate Gallery, London, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Kiki Smith select solo exhibitions include: Kiki Smith, Monnaie de Paris, Paris (2019); Kiki Smith: Procession originated at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany and traveled to the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland and the Belvedere, Vienna, Austria (2018). Some major retrospectives dedicated to her work were held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 2003-04, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in 2005-2006, at the Houston Museum, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2007, at the Brooklyn Museum, New York in 2009, at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Saint Etienne, in 2013.