Kiki Smith was born in Germany and brought up in New Jersey, eventually settling in New York in 1976, where she is still based. Around 1978, she joined Collaborative Projects, Inc. (Colab), an artists’ collective devoted to making art accessible through exhibitions outside commercial gallery settings. It was during this period that she made her first artworks, monotypes of everyday objects. Since this time, she has worked in a vast array of mediums including bronze, etching, and drawing. Kiki Smith’s primary artistic interests include bodily decay (an interest that led her to becoming a certified EMT), mortality, the female body, and dissolving boundaries between species. Her work draws heavily from fairytales and folklore for dreamy yet politically potent compositions. She cultivates a postmodern nostalgia for archetypes and stories, while re-enchanting them through feminist revision.