Kiki Smiths art, often craft-oriented media explores the connection human connection to a range of attitudes. Her works display a link between the scientific, personal, political and spiritual connection to the human body. Smith’s works have a socio-political context that is evident throughout all her pieces. Through her work Smith forces her audience to face issues within society. The issues range from the issues of health, gender, sexuality and the self.

As a feminist artist, Smith very much focuses on the female body and its biological systems in order to construct a metaphor for the social issues surrounding it. Themes of birth, regeneration, sustenance and the female body are frequently evident within her works. It has been a career long endeavor for Smith to create and construct art that could only have been made by a woman as she attempts to express the universal concerns from a female perspective.

The media in which Smith predominately uses, very much adds to the meaning that she attempts to construct within her works. It is printmaking that draws her to the concept of repetition and how it is so deeply connected with repetition In her series of prints titled “Untitled” Smith states that her interest in printmaking is that it is uniqueness versus repetition as printmaking can mimic what we are as humans; we are all the same yet everyone is different. It is through her material and technique that Smith is able to construct a deeper meaning. In nearly all her works there is a connecting theme throughout. It is through these prints that Smith is able to portray meaning. She uses doilies in develop a greater meaning as it the fragility of the female reproductive system and its ability that she is trying to present to her audience.

Smith’s later works included a range of feminine symbols that culminated into a series of works depicting fragmented breasts and vaginas. Through this Smith challenged the predominately male dominated industry. Smith inspired by the women’s movement was focused largely on traditionally feminine craft techniques and explicit feminine imagery that often revolved around the female body.

Smith’s depictions of the female body have always challenged social taboos that are so evidently embedded within societies. It is through her works and the carefully chosen media that she is able to present her meaning to the audience. It is through her works that the socio-political context is evident as the first wave of feminist art, presented female genitals not for an erotic gesture however a political one.