During the 1990s, artist Kiki Smith and several others, labeled themselves as "body artists." The idea of "body artists" relates with the:
"American debates over abortion, AIDS, artificial intelligence, euthanasia, genetic engineering, overpopulation, pollution, reproductive rights, sexual difference, and sexual practice..."
Smith created pieces to help understand abjection, or degrading, of gender and sexuality. In Smith's piece, Virgin Mary, she expressed the human body through it's physical and spiritual nature and presented them in "abject, fragmented, and damaged states." This sculpture displays the female body as vulnerable and in moments of crisis and trauma.
Materials used for sculptures like Virgin Mary are: wax, soap, chocolate, urine, tears, sweat, blood, and several other bodily fluids.
"My work is about trying to reclaim one's own turf, or one's own vehicle for being here, to own it and use it to look at how we are here."-Kiki Smith, 1995.
Doss, Erika. "Abjection and the Body." Twentieth-Century American Art. Oxford University Press: 2002. 230-1.
