Medal-necklace, evocating the artist's Sky tapestry, long chain, gold-plated bronze, edition of the Monnaie de Paris, 300 pieces, signed, 2019
Exhibition:
- Kiki Smith, La Monnaie de Paris, 18th of October , to 9th of February 2020.
The American artist Kiki Smith, born in 1954, occupies a privileged place on the international scene of contemporary art, since the beginning of the 1990's. Many monographic exhibitions have been devoted to her all around the world, particularly in this historic place which is L'Hôtel des Monnaies from 2019 to 2020, the first parisian industrial building created by the architect Jacques-Denis Antoine in 1767, a jewel and manifesto of french classicism. Member of the American Academy of Arts, Letters and Sciences, Kiki Smith is member since 2017 of the Royal Academy of Arts of London. In 2006, the Time Magazine rises her to the rank of 100 people who shape the world. In 2013, she received from the hands of another very influential woman, Hillary Clinton, the Medal of Arts from the United States Department of State as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center. Beyond her successful participations in the most important international art fairs as the Biennale of Venice and prestigious museum institutions and foundations of contemporary art, all these recognitions attest to the strength of her commitment and her career as a powerful and inspiring woman, the central theme of her artistic message. A professor at New York University, she also teaches at Columbia University.
On the occasion of her exhibition at the Monnaie de Paris, she created this medal-necklace emblematic of the themes outstanding her art: women and nature and the chthonian forces that connect them. Struck in the heart of the Parisian workshops, this jewel also pays tribute to the artist's passion for craftsmanship and numismatics. This jewel-medal evocates one of her emblematic tapestries, Sky, produced in 2012, and inspired by her amazing discovery in Angers of a masterpiece of medieval tapestry,The Apocalypse. From Sky, will born a great poetic and pantheistic cycle, around nature and the cosmos. Animals - deer, eagles, wolves or butterflies - gravitate harmoniously and freely in an idyllic nature, around a majestic female figure, woman-queen, half-Ishtar, half-mistress of animals, governing the cosmos and nature with her harmonious strength in a just and peaceful order. Kiki Smith's art brings back, with a very contemporary perception, the ancient reign of the mother-goddesses having preceded that of the Man-God. She tells us with Aragon that: "Woman is the future of man ". The poet is probably always right, but even more when the artist is in keeping with his time.