Kiki Smith
Blue Night, 2021 - Giralda Plaza
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Project Description
Blue Night depicts 42 suspended elements created by Kiki Smith. The mirrored renderings will reflect light through a transparent blue background; holographic vinyl denotes the stars that comprise the actual constellations. The artist was inspired by the constellation drawings from the late 17th century by Johannes Hevelius and others.
Smith is embracing augmented reality (AR) as an artistic tool. Upon gazing at her skyscape, viewers are invited to view an AR element through their own devices. Ghosted images of her works will appear on screen followed by the stars and asterism that compose each animal constellation. A special feature will allow visitors to bring the image up to the sky or to the ground for selfies by moving their device while on Giralda Plaza.
“In ancient times it was believed that the sky was somewhere between heaven and earth,” said Smith. “It’s great to be able to present light, hope, and joy for so many to experience.”
Coral Gables is creating a printed and free downloadable version of a Blue Night coloring book of Smith’s drawings. As Illuminate Coral Gables’ education and promotional partners, the Coral Gables Community Foundation, Miami-Dade County Public Schools and the Greater Miami Visitors Convention Bureau will share the link for the public to download. Additionally, local restaurants will have coloring pages for patrons of all ages to enjoy.
This work was sponsored by the City of Coral Gables, FL.
• Kiki Smith's Animal Constellation Coloring Book ( Free Download)
Kiki Smith (American, b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany) is recognized around the world since the 1980s for her multidisciplinary work that explores embodiment and the natural world. The body, mortality, regeneration, gender politics, as well as the interconnection of spirituality and the natural world are observed through a postmodern lens. Her expansive practice resonates personally and universally, manifesting in sculpture, glassmaking, printmaking, watercolor, photography, and textile, among other production methods. Drawn to the cogency of repetition in narratives and symbolic representations, much of Smith’s work is inspired by the visual culture of the past, spanning scientific anatomical renderings from the eighteenth century to the abject imagery of relics, memento mori, folklore, mythology, Byzantine iconography, and medieval altarpieces.
Smith cites her initial interest in craft and populist art forms as influences; however, her earliest introduction to art came from her father, sculptor Tony Smith. By 1974, she entered Hartford Art School in Connecticut and studied film. She left the school after eighteen months of enrollment, ultimately settling in New York City in 1976 where, two years later, she became an active member of Collaborative Projects, Inc. (Colab). As a collective of artists working outside of the commercial gallery system, Colab proposed a break from the post Minimal abstraction of the 1970s in favor of representation, accessibility, and community-oriented art. It was during this time that Smith began printmaking, an aspect of her practice that would gain equal footing with her sculptural work.
Although Smith had exhibited nationally and internationally in group shows throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s—notably participating in the famed Times Square Show of 1980, her first one-person exhibition, Life Wants to Live, was presented at The Kitchen, New York, in 1982, just two years after her father’s death. This exhibition was shortly followed by her first major museum show, Concentrations 20: Kiki Smith, held at the Dallas Museum of Art in 1989, as well as her first eponymous traveling exhibition, which opened in 1990 at the Centre d’art contemporain in Geneva and traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Amsterdam. The year 1990 also marked the launch of her first print collaboration with Universal Limited Art Editions, New York, propelling several ensuing collaborations in universities, print workshops, and foundries across the country, leading to her edition of tapestries, which she began in 2012 and produced through Magnolia Editions in Oakland, California.
Since 1982, Smith has been the subject of one-person exhibitions worldwide including over twenty-five solo museum exhibitions. Notable exhibitions include Directions—Kiki Smith: Night, held at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (1998); as well as Prints, Books and Things, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2003). Organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, a retrospective of her work titled A Gathering, 1980–2005 opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005 and traveled throughout the United States before closing at La Colección Jumex, Mexico City, in 2007. Solo exhibitions of her work include Constellation, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri (2007); Her Home, which opened at Museum Haus Esters, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany (2008), and traveled to Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, as Her Memory and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, as Sojourn; I Myself Have Seen It: Photography & Kiki Smith, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2010), which traveled to Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona; Rituals, High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2012); Kiki Smith and Paper: The Body, the Muse and the Spirit, Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, Stillwater (2017), which traveled to Syracuse University Art Museum, New York; and Procession, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2018), Below the Horizon, Museum at Eldridge House, New York (2018), among others. In 2019, Smith has one-artist exhibitions at Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, Germany; Palazzo Pitti, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Florence; Belvedere Museum, Vienna; and Monnaie de Paris.
Smith has been featured in hundreds of group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial, New York (1991, 1993, 2002); La Biennale di Firenze, Florence, Italy (1996–1997; 1998); La Biennale di Venezia (1993, 1999, 2005, 2009, 2017); and the 2017 Canadian Biennial in Ottowa. Recent group exhibitions include: Queensize: Female Artists from the Olbricht Collection, Me Collectors Room / Olbricht Foundation, Berlin (2014); Sleeping Beauty, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan (2014); Masterpiece in Focus: Kiki Smith and Tony Smith, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2016); Stampede: Animals in Art, Denver Art Museum, Colorado (2017); The Time. The Place. Contemporary Art from the Collection, Henry Art Gallery, The University of Washington, Seattle (2017); Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now), The Met Breuer, New York (2018); and The Moon – From Inner Worlds to Outer Space, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, which traveled to Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo (2018).
Smith’s work is held in public collections throughout the United States and abroad including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum; Solomon R.
Prizes, Awards
2017 Honorary Royal Academician from the Royal Academy of Arts, London 2016 25th Annual Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, The Sculpture Center, New York
2010 Nelson A. Rockefeller Award
2009 Edward MacDowell Medal
2009 Women in the Arts Award
2005 Athena Award for Excellence in Printmaking
2000 Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture