Interview between Artist Kiki Smith and Carlo McCormick

Blood Pool, Kiki Smith, 1998

McCormick: how much of your work would you say is psychological and how much of it is purely formal?

Smith: I'd say, about ninety-nine percent of it is psychological...Another part of it is phenomenologically saying, "Look at it, look at the skin surface, or the endocrine system, or how much blood there is in the body, and try to see how these things relate in the social or the political, now that all these different factions in society are trying to vie for control of the body, or the ideologies and philosophies of the body." It tries to make people look at and examine those philosophies and ideologies that own you in every aspect of your life—be it religion, government, health, gender definition, or whatever.

McCormick: Is it then, in a sense, trying to reclaim the body from society for the individual?

Smith: Absolutely. Trying to reclaim it, trying to separate yourself from these ideologies that your head is packed full with. Consciously you may not even be aware that most of the things you think are historical, that you're just a product of what people were thinking five hundred years ago. In trying to look at the form without any of this moralistic stuff that's dumped on it, hopefully one can get a more detached view that's free of all that baggage. I know, in my life, I feel oppressed a great deal by all these ideologies that I've either internalized in my own psyche or am politically and socially confronted with every day. Your body is like Everyman, where all these things are played out and you're like a hemophiliac just trying to keep your blood in while all these external forces, these vampires, are trying to get at it.

From interview at: http://www.jca-online.com/ksmith.html