Kiki Smith on the Memory of Body, Time, and Material - Interview by Ayse Sarioglu

Kiki Smith, Blue Night, Bronze, 2025

By AYSE SARIOGLU January 13, 2026

Kiki Smith’s works exist — much like the body, much like nature, much like time.

Throughout a practice spanning decades, Smith has developed a language that stretches from sculpture to printmaking, from glass to bronze, from paper to mosaic. This language does not reduce the body, nature, mythology, and mortality into a single narrative. On the contrary, it creates a space where these concepts rub against one another, sometimes dissolve, sometimes reappear.

In this conversation, we spoke with Kiki Smith about evading identity, collaborating with materials, the power of ambiguity, the experience of the female body, how time transforms one’s work, and the relationship between art and the unseen.

This is not an explanation.

This is an invitation.

Kiki Smith, Shadow Drawing August, Crayon and watercolor on gampi silk tissue, 2024

Ayse Sarioglu: Your practice spans decades and multiple media. Today, how would you define the core — the center — of your artistic identity?

Kiki Smith: Actually, I try not to have any central identity. Neither as a person nor as an artist. Identity is something we enter and exit. Interests come and go. Obsessions shift. Over time, you think you have done something, but it often evaporates and transforms into something else.

As an artist, I don’t try to do any one specific thing. The work goes wherever it goes.

Sarioglu: Looking at your early works, do you see continuities? Do they still resonate in your practice today?

Smith: Generally, my way of making things hasn’t changed much. My relationship with materials, the qualities of the materials I choose, are fairly consistent. Sometimes you don’t think about a subject for twenty or thirty years; then suddenly it becomes interesting again. Not working on something for a long time doesn’t mean it is no longer a part of you.

Sarioglu: How do you balance being both a contemporary artist and a historian of your own practice?

Smith: I can’t really say I am a good historian of my own work. Mostly, I focus on what I am doing now. But it’s important not to deny the path you have traveled.

I try, to some extent, to look back and archive what I’ve done. But artists are always open to new experiences. Still, I try not to reject the emotional places I have come from.

Sarioglu: Your choice of materials ranges from papier-mâché to bronze, from textiles to glass. How do you decide which material to use for a work?

Smith: I often repeat the same image in different materials because each material teaches you something different.

Sometimes I simply want to work with a particular material. But most often, I have an idea in mind, and that idea tells me which material I should use.

Kiki Smith, Puppet with Moth, Papier-mâché with muslin, 2008

Sarioglu: Has there ever been a moment when the material itself guided the concept?

Smith: Yes — when I was asked to create a mosaic for Grand Central Madison Station in New York. I had never done mosaics before. Such a deep history, the architectural context, thinking in small pieces… Or stained glass. Glass has its own rules. All of this has to be taken into account.

Sarioglu: Do you see the material as an active collaborator in your creative process?

Smith: Absolutely. I try to understand how the material wants to behave. I don’t fight it. I don’t force it. I mostly try to learn its characteristics and use it as passively as possible.

Sarioglu: Bodies, nature, and myth frequently appear in your work. How do these intersect in your imagination?

Smith: Not with a deliberate intention. They come and go. I just do what is plainly in front of me. I look at what I need to pay attention to.

Sarioglu: Do you see your work as an anatomy not only of the human body but of human experience?

Smith: We understand experience through the body. And that changes over time. As you age, your relationship with your body evolves.

This brings new experiences and new insights. But not didactically — in a stranger, more indirect way.

Sarioglu: How do mythological and natural images serve as metaphors for memory, mortality, and transformation?

Smith: More than nature itself, it is the images and meanings we project onto it that carry long histories. When you use an image, you are also playing with its history.

But sometimes I just want to let something “be.” Whether alive or dead, without imposed meaning.

These may be personal obsessions, but I don’t feel the need to explain them to the world.

Kiki Smith, Shadow Drawing June, Crayon and watercolor on gampi silk tissue, 2025

Sarioglu: Some of your works remained unseen for decades. How does time affect your relationship with your own work?

Smith: I feel strong emotional connections with some works, and none with others. Time can either calm or deepen those feelings.

What’s interesting is that in those old works, I can still see how I work today. People don’t really change that much.

Sarioglu: In your last exhibition in New York ( The Moon Watches the Earth ) , you brought together works from the 1980s and 1990s with new productions (125 Newbury Gallery, New York). Seeing past and present together in the same space, how did that affect your perception of your own practice?

Smith: It actually showed me how much I have stayed the same. The way I work, my relationship with materials, is still very similar.

I’m glad some youthful traits have fallen away, but my way of making things is almost identical. I still love working with a material that has no fixed form but possesses qualities. Sitting with it, working slowly, repeating, shaping almost unconsciously.

Seeing the works side by side gave me a sense of continuity rather than radical change. I genuinely felt I still knew myself. How I work, how I think, how I follow things hasn’t changed much. Perhaps people don’t change as much as they think.

Sarioglu: Did bringing historical and contemporary works together evoke unexpected emotional or conceptual resonances for you?

Smith: Yes, definitely. But these resonances mostly appear in retrospect. When I make something, I don’t think much about what it is “about.” I just follow the work. The work tells you what to do.

Later, years afterward, you see how what you made connects with your life. Some pieces I created when I was young are now clearly tied to what I was experiencing then.

What’s interesting is that there is no major rupture between works. I don’t feel a radical difference. On the contrary, I see that I am the same person.

I still love repetition. It is very calming for me. Drawing, for example — repeating the same gesture over and over. Last night, while brushing my cat’s fur, I thought I could do that for hours. That sense of repetition…

Art is like that for me too. Moving forward in small steps, taking something again and again, changing it a bit, looking again. This is the experience I need.

Seeing my old and new works side by side, I felt this very clearly. I still need the same kind of process. Perhaps that’s why, even after decades, I can still recognize what I have made. The works remind me of who I am.

Sarioglu: How has being a woman shaped your approach to the body, birth, and mortality?

Smith: Completely. The female body carries so much discomfort, loss of control, hormones, anxiety. It teaches humility.

I remember thinking after menopause, “I’ve been poisoned with hormones for decades.” But all of this teaches something.

Sarioglu: Ambiguity and uncertainty occupy an important place in your work. Why?

Smith: I am a strong advocate of uncertainty. My work should be open. It should leave space for people to place their own experience.

I don’t want to be didactic. The work should be an open mystery for both me and others.

Sarioglu: If the viewer were to leave with a single feeling or thought, what would you want it to be?

Smith: People should follow their own work. Their own life.

Because life is bigger than our ideas — we confine ourselves too much to our ideas.

Kiki Smith, Wooden Moon, Ink and watercolor on Xuan paper, 2022

Kiki Smith’s practice does not provide answers.

It opens a space.

A space that allows for the fragility of the body, the silence of time, the memory of materials, and the wisdom of uncertainty. Like Smith’s works, this conversation does not offer certainty. But it suggests one thing:

Follow.

Your work.

Your life.

And do not fear recognizing the unseen. WM