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He is a star in the United States, but still unknown to us. Over a hundred unpublished works by the American Kiki Smith, 65, are shown for the first time in France. With his sculptures, drawings and tapestries between myths and realities, the artist reveals his poetic and cerebral universe in an exhibition at the Monnaie de Paris.
Kiki, whose real name is Chiara, is the daughter of Tony Smith, the star of minimal art. His vocation was born in childhood. She learns as much by tinkering with prototypes for her father as by looking at the Moon. Kiki Smith prefers the uncertain gleams of the dog and wolf, the ambiguities of fairy tales, to the blue sky.
" Kiki Smith was very fascinated by the fairy tales that her father read to her when she was little," explains Lucia Pesapane, the exhibition's curator. And also by a whole universe which draws its roots in the Middle Ages with its bestiaries and its imaginaries. There are these marvelous tales that we find in his poetic and dreamlike works. Today, the artist's work is on all planets, cosmology, the stars, the Moon. So, it is more peaceful. "
Femininity in all its forms
Whether by appeasement or pain, Kiki Smith is inspired by the light of eclipses or stars, to create strange characters. She gives birth to them in tapestry, wax, bronze, terracotta, glass, paper, even liquid. Her desire to represent femininity in all its forms goes through the use of materials neglected by contemporary art. At the Monnaie de Paris, the visitor is guided by a procession of bodies in situation: here, a crucified woman mimicking Christ crosses a burnt witch on a pyre.
“ For Kiki Smith, the witch is the independent, rebellious, free woman. If you think about it, all the women murdered between the 14th and 16th centuries were single women, without children, who did not accept patriarchy. Kiki Smith really likes the woman who does not suffer any domination. Sometimes she likes to dress up as a witch. There is this fascination with this figure that we find represented in his sculptures and drawings. "
A feminist artist
With this retrospective, the Monnaie de Paris is sweeping away forty years of a committed artist's career. Kiki Smith was one of the first artists to place women at the heart of art. Her work, between myths and realities, both poetic and cerebral, made her a feminist artist.
“ Kiki Smith began working on the New York art scene in the late 1970s / 88s, when all of the feminist battles were very much present in society. And as a fairly contested, feminist, political woman, we find in the exhibition works that refer to her own female body reminding us of bodily fluids : tears, blood ... Even today, all her work shows than women. "
The union of bodies with nature
His work resembles a romantic quest for the union of bodies with nature, animals and the cosmos. Its disconcerting links between the infinitely large and the intimate body are sometimes paradoxical. They inspire him with the disturbing metamorphoses of his sculptures in which women and animals are entwined, or even a woman emerging from the corpse of a gutted wolf, evoking the continuation of the tale of little red riding hood.
“ This shows a kind of hybridization between woman and animals, recalls Lucia Pesapane . It is a topical message, given all the ecological battles, global warming. In the exhibition, a room is dedicated to Sainte Geneviève and the wolf. Sainte Geneviève being the patron saint of Paris. She is trying to find this peace between woman and animal. Soothed, she seeks to find a lost harmony between nature and culture. "
Kiki Smith will be the last contemporary art exhibition at the Monnaie de Paris. Afterwards, the Monnaie de Paris gives up its contemporary art program to try to make its spaces more profitable. We would have preferred that other artists continue to bewitch them.
► Kiki Smith , exhibition at the Monnaie de Paris, until February 9