Kiki Smith, and Art and the Afterlife at the Brooklyn Museum
http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/museums/brooklyn-museum%E2%80%94sojourns-and-deaths-splendors/798/
The Brooklyn Museum‘s two shows opening on Feb 12 exemplify the institution’s strengths. Kiki Smith: Sojourn, installed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art through Sept. 12, is a focused selection of large drawings, sculptures, and mixed media work plus playful installations in the museum’s period rooms. To Live Forever: Art and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, situated on the ground floor through May 2, draws from the museum’s extensive, prized Egyptian collection.
Smith drew inspiration for this group of works, curated by Catherine J. Morris, from a silk needlework piece by Prudence Punderson called The First, Second and Last Scenes of Mortality, 1776-83 (Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford), on display here. The scene, set in a parlor, shows birth, adulthood, and death, and is apparently a rarity for depicting a woman in a creative endeavor, alongside an enslaved female of African descent, who stands by a bassinet.Smith picks up on motifs in the historical piece—chairs, coffins—and the somewhat stifling domestic interior is eerily echoed in the period room installations. Here, the artist places full-size papier mâché figures with oversized heads in a bedroom, a salon, and on a stair landing, as well as painted glass works and small bronze figures that become camouflaged in their old settings.
