Untitled (Cadaver Table I and II)

The human body is the central theme throughout the multifaceted oeuvre of the German-American sculptor and graphic artist Kiki Smith. During the artistic process she employs the principle of fragmentation in order to depict our organism as a complex system, dissecting and representing it according to the fundamental categories of life, illness, and death.

While studying in New York Smith completed an anatomy course, which provided her with valuable insights into the human interior. During an autopsy the cadaver’s ribcage is opened up and the internal organs extracted, leaving behind the empty visceral cavity. Based on this observation, Smith compared the human body to a bowl. The »Cadaver Tables« are a manifestation of this insight. The viewer is confronted with heavy tables standing in a room, their surfaces marked by deep hollows, which, when viewed at close quarters, reveal themselves to be the strange, sinister negative forms of human torsos.