Kiki Smith
Kiki Smith, born in Nuremberg in 1954, lives and works in New York and has been regarded as one of the leading artists of her generation since the late 1980s. Through sculpture, drawing, photography and video, she explores fundamental questions of human existence, the body and the origins of creative inspiration. While her early works also addressed the hidden and internal aspects of the human body, since 2000 nature, animals and fairy-tale motifs have increasingly moved to the forefront of her practice. A recurring motif in her work is the light bulb, which Smith uses as a symbol of energy, creativity, enlightenment and transformation. Smith is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has participated in the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial.
For Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg, Kiki Smith developed the limited edition Light Catcher (2013) over the course of a two-year working process. The work takes the form of a light bulb in white biscuit porcelain that appears to have been shattered and reassembled from individual fragments. Nymphenburg’s porcelain masters created the basic form of the light bulb, while Smith shaped each of the shard-like sections by hand. Rather than following a predetermined design, the edition evolved intuitively through direct work on the object, making each piece unique. In Light Catcher, Smith translates one of the central motifs of her artistic practice into porcelain, combining the light bulb as a symbol of light, energy and creative ideas with the fragility of the material.
