Kiki Smith

Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan
Through July 15

During the ’80s, in her earlier attempts to decipher the mysteries of the human body, Kiki Smith brought us into one of the first fifteenth century amphitheaters for anatomical study. Taking apart the body, removing the flesh, carefully conserving the separate parts, and extracting the essence of each-these are the processes by which the body’s actuality has been reconstructed into a completely new image in her recent works. This is anatomy not as a science, but rather as a mere stop on the journey towards a new panorama of archetypes.

Her work incorporates a fragmentation that reveals new syntheses; connections which delve deeper than the simple presentation of pieces previously collected and preserved in formaldehyde. The actual object or its mere copy are insufficient; our physicality becomes transformed and is translated into images that bring together symbol, mythology, mystery, and magic. Smith becomes the author of a new Genesis.

Serpent presents a snake-like female creature, in the fetal position, with two tails, playing with two red apples with her hawk-like talons. The complexity of the references creates a series of associations overflowing with meaning: it is a vision of woman who, like the serpent, belongs to the earth that gave her life and who, in turn, gives birth herself. It is also an image of Eve, a double temptress due to her incipient metamorphosis, who might also, in the evocative game of the two apples, represent the masculine essence reduced to testicles. Genesis, temptation, sin, and gender are all aspects present in the polymorphous being that Smith has created.

In Sirens, the artist sculpts not fish-women, but bird-women in bronze. They are lugubrious images, weighted down by their human parts, so that it is difficult to imagine them taking flight. Completely without lightness, as threatening as harpies, Smith’s sirens are held down, glued to the earth to which, like sphinxes, they hold the secret.

Calling, a bronze sculpture of a creature lying prostrate with oak leaves sprouting out of its side, and which may be the artist’s alter ego, appears like Moses speaking to the burning bush, awed and humble, in prayer before a divinity that may be interpreted as naturae fabbrica incredibilis.

If, before now, her intention was to reveal, uncover, and take apart, in order to realize hypotheses as substance, the artist now has given up trying to totally possess objects, but has created a language which dresses and disguises itself continually, finding new ways to explain our existence within the territory of myth.




Milovan Farronato
Translation by Jacqueline Smith