Kiki Smith Quotes

I'm reminded of the arm, and the body, and the appendage.

The point of art is that it always has the necessity to expand because people are inherently expanding.

Prints mimic what we are as humans: we are all the same and yet every one is different. I think there's a spiritual power in repetition, a devotional quality, like saying rosaries.

One's self is always shifting in relationship to beauty and you always have to be able to incorporate yourself or your new self into life. Like your skin starts hanging off your arms and stuff, and then you have to think, well that's really beautiful too. It just isn't beautiful in a way that I knew it was beautiful before.

I'm in general a nostalgic person, but I don't know if I'm nostalgic for the 80s!

I like that feeling when you’re making art, that you’re taking the energy out of your body and putting it into a physical object. I like things that are labor-intensive : you make a little thing and another little thing and another little thing, and eventually you see a possibility.

It was a very economically depressed time [the 80s] and because of that, there was a lot of space. Everything was relatively dilapidated, and one could live on a pretty low income. One could live well below the poverty line and not suffer immensely.

I've been very lucky being in New York. While there are many things that have impacted my life, I have been able to stay here and do my own work.