Kiki Smith, Free Fall, 1994, Echizen Kojo Kizuki Intaglio print on paper, photogravure, etching, drypoint, 84.5X106.7cm ⓒKiki Smith, Courtesy of Universal Limited Art Edition
Even though it was a long time ago, the memory of the moment my body experienced the moment of the first skydiving day remains quite vivid. I jumped out of the plane, clinging to a professional instructor, and flew as he guided me. It would have been falling to say that it was flying, but even if it was an illusion, the time when I felt the wind brushing my body while floating in the sky with my bare body for a while was filled with fear and pounding. When I was able to escape my fear and enjoy the sky, the parachute opened. In an instant, the speed of the fall slowed down. It was too painful to rely on a parachute to enjoy the scenery of the world. I missed the time before deploying my parachute. Under the domination of irresistible gravity, the momentary flight that I was able to enjoy aroused feelings similar to a kind of sense of liberation, as if I was freed from all the frameworks of the world. I wanted to go up to the sky again.
Kiki Smith, who has been asking various questions through the medium of her body for a long time, named the work ‘Free Fall’ based on her nude photos, based on the artist’s desire to break away from the fixed structure of the world. I guess it would have been He transferred his nude photos onto a copper plate with infrared film and rubbed the background with sandpaper to create a rough texture, producing ‘Free Fall’ in the form of a book. The world that the artist wanted to jump out of is a world that considers difference as a basis for discrimination and justifies hatred, divides values by separating the mind and body, divides the center and the periphery, divides women and men, and distinguishes superiority from inferiority to give a hierarchical order. Wouldn’t it be a world that produces taboos? The order of the world, where it is unknown who or what it is going for, is like a strong castle built by those who have lost the courage to fall freely.