"Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions."
"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."
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Source: Siri Engberg, Kiki Smith, Linda Nochlin, Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005). “Kiki Smith: a gathering, 1980-2005”
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"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."
"You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I'm given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one's own vision."
"The point isn't to know what you're doing. The point is to have an experience doing something."
"I trust my work. It's a collaboration with the material, and when it's viewed, it's a collaboration with the world."
"I think making things beautiful is important. But often what's first considered ugly is beautiful, too."