Description:
Long horizontal image of an adult figure in the fetal position. The figure's skull and muscular tissue are visible.

Label Text:
To produce this life-sized image, Kiki Smith had her own body traced on a large copper etching plate. She then added an intricate network of etched lines and aquatint washes to render the human body’s fragile and complex muscular system. Smith is known for her physical and collaborative approach to printmaking and sculpture, in which she explores the fragility of living things, both human and animal. Floating in the indeterminate white field of the paper, and curled in the fetal position, this figure evokes both birth and death. The title, Sueño, the Spanish word for “dream,” is one way that we understand and describe these unfathomable states of being.

-Hannah Blunt, Associate Curator, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum (Sept. 2016)

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+2013.41.1

Research on objects in the collections, including provenance, is ongoing and may be incomplete. If you have additional information or would like to learn more about a particular object, please email fc-museums-web@fivecolleges.edu.