The Unconscious Expression Of An Individual In A Work Of Art

Kiki Smith(born 1954)is an artist who has been known in the U.S.since the early 1980s.She is widely considered as one of the most fascinating female artists,and ttracts great attention in the contemporary art world.Her artworks based on multiple techniques have influenced the printmaking field and also are well-known for various forms of media in the sculpture field,whose distinctive artistic value has profound research significance for other artists.However,in China,Smith's art is usually interpreted as a political expression of human body of a certain gender.After studying Smith's art,I find out that she has no original intention of creating feminine art.Smith mentioned in an interview that:"I think I chose the body as a subject,not consciously,but because it is the one form that we all share..." "I grow up in a family with a lot of illness.There was a preoccupation with the body...."By using case study and document research,this paper,based on the artist Kiki Smith's self-experience in combination with the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung's Personal Unconscious,explores the expression of the personal unconscious in Smith's artworks from an art-making practitioner's perspective.