Kiki Smith | Art21 | Preview from Season 2 of "Art in the Twenty-First Century" (2003)

Kiki Smith's work explores the body as a receptacle for knowledge, belief, and storytelling. Smith turned the figurative tradition inside out by creating objects and drawings based on organs, cellular forms, and the human nervous system. This body of work evolved to incorporate animals, domestic objects, and narrative tropes from classical mythology and folk tales.

Kiki Smith is featured in the Season 2 episode "Stories" of the Art21 series "Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century".

Learn more about Kiki Smith: http://www.art21.org/artists/kiki-smith

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It was all, a lot of death.

Death everywhere.

I've spent a couple of years trying dead animals.

I had this vision of, that I was supposed to make another

Noah's ark, but it was of dead animals.

This is when my cat died. I made all this sort of pietà, sort of self protrait,

pietà of me holding my dead cat.

I made like 50 billion prints of dead animals,

and then I think 'How come I own all those prints still'

[laughs]