(b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany) is an American artist whose influential, multidisciplinary practise explores the human body, nature, and the metaphysical. Since the 1980s, Smith has worked across sculpture, drawing, printmaking, textiles, photography, and installation, creating psychologically charged works that engage with themes of mortality, regeneration, and transformation. Drawing from mythology, folklore, and religious iconography, her practise foregrounds the body as both a physical and symbolic site.
Smith has been the subject of major institutional exhibitions worldwide, including retrospectives at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2003 and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis in 2005. That same year, to coincide with the Venice Biennale, she presented Homespun Tales at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice. In 2008, she debuted Her Home , a site-specific installation with Museum Haus Esters, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, which subsequently toured to the Kunsthalle Nürnberg and the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona. Most recently, she held her first solo exhibition in China at Yi Space.
