Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Untitled a.k.a. The Sitter
Kiki Smith American, born Germany
Not on view
Smith’s figures resist the patriarchal eroticization of the nude female body. In Untitled, a distinctly nontitillating and unclassical body made of sticky, dense, and viscerally powerful materials evokes the thick and messy corporeal reality of a body that ages, sweats, and bleeds. Wax and cloth mimic the translucency, porousness, and fragility of skin, evident in the deep open wounds gouged into the figure’s back, which establishes her as an abject survivor of physical as well as existential violence.
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