Quotes from Kiki Smith

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.

I trust my work. It's a collaboration with the material, and when it's viewed, it's a collaboration with the world.

If you stick to your work it will take care of you somehow.

Sometimes your personal life is much more significant. Sometimes your work life is more significant. Friends and family, or sometimes the general population, take precedence.

Making art is a lot about just seeing what happens if you put some energy into something.

I think a lot of making art is listening to yourself.

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

When studio art started being seen as important, I joined Colab, and then I became very involved.

We as beings are very contradictory, complicated creatures that work in our best interest and against our best interest. In a certain way, I want my work to have all that messiness.

I always thought it was a trap to fit into ideologies, and maybe that's a luxury position, but my work is a reflection of my being here. My being here is not a reflection of an idea.

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.

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.

In our family, there wasn't anything else besides art. Nothing else in the world existed. My father never spoke about going to a movie or listening to music, other than my mother's singing.

Many people don't have relationships to their siblings in adulthood, or they have superficial ones. It's sort of unfashionable, particularly in America, to be close to your family.