CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/8/2022

Magical 'Kiki Smith: Memory' is New from Deste Foundation

This detail from Kiki Smith's "Siren" (2019) is reproduced from Memory, documenting the artist's magical 2019 installation at the Deste Foundation's former-slaughterhouse outpost on the Greek island of Hydra. "For Smith, the body and its symmetry are always close at hand, and never in a state of stasis," Maggie Wright writes. "Physical forms have the ability to morph, mutate, dissolve. Smith has often noted the autobiographical nature of her work, and it is hard not to recognize the female experience at the core of metamorphosis: the initial transformation from girlhood to womanhood is fraught and powerful. In Smith’s art, however, change expands to nurture a variety of forms. Humans turn to animals, animals to other animals; new beings are collaged from each. Bronze oxidizes, candles melt, flags inflate and flutter, and sunlight reemerges daily. Stories, too, are continually reshaped: Greek myths and pagan rituals have been absorbed into the religious stories and sacraments of Christianity, plays and poems are recited to new audiences. Fairy tales and parables evolve for the next generation: a poisoned princess no longer passively sleeps, she actively dreams. Back in Hydra’s Historical Archives – Museum of Hydra, where remnants of the past await the gaze of the present, an island’s history is told and retold. Its collective memories, stories and traditions are like boats in the blue sea, helping to navigate increasingly choppy water. Over all, the Hydra snake—monster or scapegoat, healer and healed—watches from the heavens."