In Montpellier, the marvelous art of Kiki Smith bewitches the MO.CO

The MO.CO museum in Montpellier, France, has opened a major exhibition dedicated to American artist Kiki Smith, titled "Être ici | Maintenant | Partout" (Being Here | Now | Everywhere). Co-curated by Rahmouna Boutayeb and Pauline Faure, the show features approximately 150 works spanning Smith's entire career, including sculptures in bronze and papier-mâché, drawings, embroidery, engravings, and photographs. The exhibition takes the human body as its central theme, reflecting Smith's personal history marked by the death of her sculptor father Tony Smith and the AIDS epidemic that devastated her circle in 1970s-80s New York. It also incorporates anatomical objects from the Montpellier medical school, echoing Smith's fascination with Gray's Anatomy.

This exhibition matters because it is Kiki Smith's first major French museum show in nearly seven years, since her 2017 presentation at the Monnaie de Paris, and it occupies the entirety of the MO.CO's spaces. Smith is a pivotal figure in contemporary art, known for her boundary-pushing exploration of the body as hybrid—human, animal, vegetal, celestial—and her ability to merge the real with the mythical and medieval. The show's non-chronological, immersive approach highlights her extraordinary versatility across media and reinforces her ongoing influence on discussions around identity, mortality, and the natural world.