Kiki Smith

Through her explorations of the human body and the natural world, internationally acclaimed artist Kiki Smith has confronted the most urgent social and spiritual issues of our day. Direct and accessible, Smith's expressive art engages social and cultural issues in a sometimes viscerally disturbing way. In her recent work, Smith has extended these themes, incorporating rites of passage and cycles of life, death, and rebirth through an iconography of animal, human, and fairy tale imagery. Helaine Posner's monograph is a comprehensive survey of Smith's work in installation, sculpture, and graphic media. She discusses its origins and proposes an interpretive framework, locating it with the artistic traditions that have nourished Smith and tracing its development from the 1980s to present. An interview with Smith adds the artist's own perspective on the work.

Helaine Posner, adjunct curator at the American Federation of Arts, has organized several exhibitions of Kiki Smith's work. Posner is the author of Kiki Smith: Telling Tales, which accompanies an exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York.

Christopher Lyon is an editor and writer specializing in contemporary art.