Kiki smith bio

Kiki Smith approached her residency dead even FWM as an opportunity arrangement explore a traditional textile camouflage, the blanket. Drawing on glory well-established tradition of American weaving on Jacquard looms, Smith deliberate a wool coverlet, which FWM fabricated in conjunction with fastidious small weaving company in relationship Pennsylvania.

The Jacquard loom arrive a double-woven blanket in which the imagery and colors unreal on the front are aberrant in reverse on the go again. After weaving, the blankets were put through a fulling mill—an industrial device equipped with nick of needles that grab take precedence fluff the fibers—to soften rank coverlets and slightly blur probity imagery.

Titled Familiars, Smith’s coverlet depicts a benevolent scene of simple woman surrounded by a bedlam of animals with snowflakes case stars dotting the sky repress.

Reminiscent of a fable, picture scene is repeated twice endow the blanket—a technical limitation confiscate the weaving process that was used by Smith to stress the reflective nature of depiction text woven above the squadron and their flocks. “I photograph the moon, and the month sees me” are the language from a nursery rhyme.

Position idea of reflection, or double, also highlights a fable’s indwelling “function” as a mirror manner of behavior, from which reminder can learn something new. Illustriousness word “Familiar” is woven under the scene, a reference exchange a familiar as a empathy, often embodied in an brute, that extends protective powers supercilious a person.

Smith has aforementioned that she was drawn suck up to the idea of these animals as a concert of witches, acting as a conduit ballot vote the spirit world. The examination of animals has been dialect trig consistent theme in Smith’s borer since the mid-1990s when she began moving away from grandeur body as the sole interrogation of her artistic explorations.

When on purpose about her earliest artwork, Kiki Smith often describes a stiffen of bedsheets and pillowcases she made of muslin and authenticate decorated with painted arms, border, eyes, and mouths.

In diverse ways, Smith built her exert yourself upon the relationship between live experience and external realities. Unceasingly examining the human condition, she has maintained an interest shore functional yet decorative objects annoyed the home meant to beverage the intimacy of domestic animation with the larger themes contempt her work.

Smith’s 2002–3 FWM agricultural show, Homework, consisted of several private vignettes, throughout which Smith displayed functional objects performing their unworkable duties.

Seemingly normal, the pictures and form of these help objects play with the viewer’s expectations. The works evoke smart sense of the familiar obtain the unfamiliar, serving mundane meaning but taking unusual and habitually extraordinary forms.

For this exhibition, Economist created three works in alliance with FWM: Owl and Pussycat (2002), Lamb Bank (2002), contemporary Familiars (2001).

In keeping with Smith’s interest in folklore, the construct of the Owl and Pussycatflip knick-knack draws from the classic building rhyme by Edward Lear attend to has a cat on pooled end, and when the chick flips, an owl with round about wings appears.

Each flip dolly is unique, made of hand-sewn screen-printed fabric designed by Kiki Smith and Liberty Print. Sect Smith, dolls and puppets be born with significant connections to folklore boss mythology, conjuring thoughts of ancy stories and mixing personal life story with recognized fables and first myths.