Kiki Smith

The exhibition brings together around one hundred works by the American artist from the 1980s to the present day. It features the major themes of the artist’s oeuvre, including the human body, the female figure and the symbiotic relationship with nature, which she explores through a wide variety of media: bronze, plaster, glass, porcelain, tapestry, paper and wax.

In her practice and in the use of symbolism, Kiki Smith is inspired by her childhood memories, her reading of the fairy tales of Perrault and the Grimm brothers. It was in the mid-1980s that Kiki Smith discovered for herself new and original ways of exploring women’s social, cultural and political roles in society.

Subsequently, her work took on a more narrative form. From a feminist standpoint, she appropriated many of the great female biblical figures in order to depict them in a fresh and innovative manner. Within the corpus of her work they sit side by side with heroines from fairy tales or the ambiguous figure of the witch, at the crossroads of a universe of fantasy and popular folklore. From the early 2000s, she became interested in the great myths of creation and the cosmogony.