#13 | Kiki Smith

#13 (1992) testifies to Kiki Smith’s interest in the representation of the body and its relationship with the surrounding world. Like other Smith bodies, #13 is dismembered, captured in three quarters as in a clinical observation, it is the gateway to experience: focusing on organs, veins, muscles, Smith celebrates the vulnerability and perishable nature of the body, but also its refinement. The half-bust portrayed in #13 is made of a wax-like material that highlights its psychological as well as physiological character, in the interest of telling the nervous connections that make up our private identity and the body as an instrument of expression of affections, forces, feelings.

©Kiki Smith, #13, 1992
Courtesy the artist, Pace Gallery and ClampArt