Early Life
Smith grew up in South Orange, New Jersey and attended Columbia High School.
Kiki Smith began sculpting in the late 1970s. She is best known for her sculptures; however, she creates pieces in a variety of media. She was an active member of the artists' group Colab.
Her father was the artist Tony Smith and her mother the actress and opera singer Jane Lawrence Smith. They were both religious in some sense; her mother was a converted Hindu and Catholic, and her father was raised by Jesuits. Smith describes herself as spiritual, saying that, "the most important part of my life” has been spent “thinking about God or Gods”. There are underlying themes of devotion, religion, repetition, and/or spirituality in Smith's work, whether that be in reference to her own spirituality, or the spirituality of other cultures and their history. Smith has said that she was influenced by her experience as a learning disabled child in school, and that as a result it is important to her for her work to be accessible.
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