Kiki Smith is an American artist who was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1954. Smith was raised in New Jersey and attended Hartford Art School, Connecticut (1974-76). Smith grew up helping her father, American Minimalist sculptor Tony Smith, produce cardboard models for his geometric sculptures, an experience which helped cultivate Smith's awareness of process and formalism.
The human form, especially the female body, became central to Smith's work in the 1980s. Smith began to focus on themes of loss and death through her depiction of the body's internal components, especially organs, cellular structures and the nervous system. The evacuation of these physiological components from the body presented anxieties surrounding the maternal body and the notion of the body as a receptacle for incorporeal components such as knowledge, belief and storytelling. By exposing its internal structures Smith portrays the dichotomy between the psychological and physiological power of the body.
In recent years, Smith's work has evolved to incorporate animals, domestic objects and narrative tropes from classical mythology and folk tales. Smith's work is in numerous prominent museum collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. A major retrospective of Smith's prints and multiples was held at The Museum of Modern Art in 2003-04. A comprehensive retrospective of Smith's work, entitled Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005, was held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2005-2006; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2006; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 2006 and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2006 - 2007. Recent exhibitions have included Kiki Smith: Her Home, at Museum Haus Esters and Kunsthalle Nuremberg, 2008; and Kiki Smith: Her Memory, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 2009. Kiki Smith lives and works in New York City.