Kiki Smith: The Fabric Workshop
Filmed in 2002, Kiki Smith discusses the housewares and other everyday objects that she created for Homework, her solo exhibition at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Smith is constantly making jewelry, drawings, and sculptures at her Manhattan home, and brought a long list of potential projects to the Fabric Workshop where she was an artist-in-residence. With the help of their expert technicians and expansive facilities, she transformed her ideas into new objects, including a reversible doll, decorative wallpaper, and a woven blanket.
Credits
Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Eve Moros Ortega. Camera: Tom Hurwitz & Ken Kobland. Sound: Bill Wander. Editor: Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: Kiki Smith & The Fabric Workshop & Museum. Theme Music: Peter Foley.
Art21 Exclusive is supported, in part, by by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; 21c Museum Hotel, and by individual contributors.
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In the 1980s, Kiki Smith literally turned the figurative tradition in sculpture inside out, 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. Life, death, and resurrection are thematic signposts in many of Smith’s installations and sculptures. The recurrent subject matter in Smith’s work has been the body as a receptacle for knowledge, belief, and storytelling.
Family History and the History of Objects
Kiki Smith talks about the roles that her family, domesticity, and death play in her work.
