translated by Giorgina Arcuri

Particularly famous for her provocative representation of the female body or her anatomic fragments, during her long career Kiki Smith has explored a wide range of subjects and themes, that vary from religion to folklore, passing through mythology, natural sciences, history of art and especially feminism. The American sculptress of German origins (she was born in Germany in 1954 but she has lived and worked in New York since the seventies) can be defined a conceptual artist, for her ability to analyze and examine the human form from its inside. All Kiki Smith’s oeuvre is founded on the intent to present the human body as a martyred body, a subject exhausted by the frantic pace of contemporary society.
Daughter of the famous minimalist sculptor Tony Smith, Kiki has been for more than three decades the unchallenged queen in the system of international art. With the use of traditional and rather malleable materials (in particular sculpture and drawing on paper), she deals with common and daily themes such as identity, sexual stereotypes and the body, supporting also the commitment of other artists of the eighties and nineties within the feminist movement.
Her work is strong and related to the theme of body materiality, perishability and vulnerability. In particular, the female body is analyzed, mainly as an erotic object seen through the point of view of the male gender. In more recent times Kiki Smith has started to deal with the theme based on the relation between man and nature, between the body and the world. Sometimes the US artist’s works are inspired to myths, tales, literature, always with the will to give them a modern reinterpretation. In other words, Kiki Smith uses a particular lexis, suspended between myths, fairy tales and poetry, where the anatomic figure becomes the artistic means of investigation of historical contexts.  
Nowadays, Kiki Smith is one  of the highest quoted artists in the world. Her “Untitled (Butterfly)”, an installation with two white marble Venuses and butterflies of various materials, in May 2006, at Christie’s New York, sold for 196,000 dollars, setting the artist’s personal top-price. Since 1995 there have been 202 passages by auction of Kiki Smith’s works, with a 70% sale percentage. The prices that circulate on the market relative the American artist’s work vary quite a lot. For instance her multiples and photos are estimated between 3 and 10 thousand dollars, while her drawings and installations reach estimates between 60 and 120 thousand dollars each.
With her works that express existential precariousness and the fragility of the human body, Kiki Smith has been exposed in the most important museums of Europe and America, recording four-fold price rises since 2004. Smith’s fame has increased not only thanks to her great creative talent, but also due to an entourage of art gallery owners who are always ready to support her, such as the Raffaella Cortese gallery in Milan, the Roman Lorcan O’neil and the Galerie Lelong in Paris.
If you want to know more about this spectacular artist you cannot miss this appointment. Kiki Smith’s art will invade the Museum Haus Esters of Krefeld until 24th August 2008. Artist divided between poetic and anatomic, she creates sculptures, installations and carvings that explore the human unconscious. The exhibition “Kiki Smith. Her Home” describes the stages of the human existence of a woman, from birth to death. The initial cue is domestic life in New England, and the works gathered in the museum of the German city delineate sceneries of possible alternative lives. As well as an interesting number of works displayed, we must mention that even the building windows and upholstery are decorated by Smith, making the entire design legible like the interior design of a house.