UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology SUMMER 2024 - Flipbook - Page 25
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
Kiki Smith, Lilith, 1994 © Kiki Smith, courtesy Pace Gallery
When we begin to discuss Untitled (Ribs) and Lilith,
she beams, “Those are two pieces I like still.” While she
admits there are pieces in museums that she sometimes
wishes would disintegrate by their own weight, Ribs
was a pivotal piece for Smith. She was staying with
friends in Berlin in the 1980s, and they’d provided her
with a small studio in their home. She’d gotten ahold
of some clay and fashioned a ribcage only to have it
break in various places as it dried. “A male friend of
mine said, ‘Oh, nobody cares what you girls are doing
because you’re all working with cardboard and it’s
falling apart.’ I got very angry. I thought, ‘You know,
as an artist you get to choose what stops you, and I can
be stopped because I made something and it broke, or
I can just glue it back together and stick it in your face
and be unapologetic about it.’” She hadn’t intended to
make things in an ephemeral way; she simply didn’t
have the art supplies and worked with what she could
get her hands on.
When we dive into discussing Lilith, I ask how she
feels about being a feminist icon. “Honestly, it’s not
my business,” she says. When she was younger, the
impetus was always another artwork that had inspired
her or made her wonder, was always something she
wanted to learn about, or she wanted to have an
experience working with a speci昀椀c medium.
She had been making works out of paper mâché, and
a dancer asked her to make sets for their troupe. She
loved watching the dancers for how “they momentarily
de昀椀ed gravity.” Figurative work, especially sculpture,
seemed essentially bound by gravity, and so she
thought gluing paper work to a wall might give an
allusion of defying gravity. But paper work is di昀케cult
to upkeep, so she ended up creating a bronze version
of Lilith. She has no idea where she learned about
the mythology of Lilith, but she did understand that
di昀昀erent circles read into her opposing viewpoints: one
side saw a positive image and the other something to
be frightened of. Lilith, to some, represented a female
who will not be controlled and therefore is viewed as
dangerous or menacing. “I like that she disembodies
and that she’s uncontrollable, and living in a society—
certainly in relation to women—you know society is
trying to control the narrative and Lilith doesn’t want
to be controlled. That’s a good thing to think about.”
She laughs, “You know, I don’t want to be controlled.”
She is ignited by this recollection, and continues, “All
the ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘I’m bad at this’—I had one of
my dealers say they stopped being an artist because
they weren’t as great as someone else, and I thought,
‘I already know that; I know I’m not such a great
artist. Why would that stop you?’ It’s not about what
you achieve; it’s about your own experience and what
you can learn from it—which is often intangible.” And
so Ribs represents not being stopped by her own
limitations or the limitations others put on her. “Art is
a way to recognize the space you have within yourself
that isn’t being recognized and is something that is
important to you.” Smith is talking about holding
space for the untalked about, seeing the unseen. You
aren’t, as a viewer, going to be handed a narrative
or given any guidance when you enter a Kiki Smith
exhibition, but chances are great that you will feel the
power of her work and walk away inquisitive, or with a
larger sense of what is unseen or untalked about inside
yourself.
With Lilith, as is true with many of her works, there
are iterations in di昀昀erent mediums, which, she says,
allows them to have di昀昀erent lives. “Each time you put
it in a di昀昀erent material, it resonates in a di昀昀erent way
or gives you other possibilities, and that’s what is very
satisfying.” Smith considers the act of making as both
physical components of how a work exists in the world
and personal components of how it means something
to you and how it engages you. For Smith, this often
means chopping drawings, prints, and molds up to
recon昀椀gure them, ultimately animating still drawings
or sculptures.
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