Born,

2002

Although Smith is best known as a sculptor, printmaking has played a fundamental role in her work since the late 1970s. One of Smith’s largest prints, Born represents the most iconic of the artist’s treatments of the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, who dominates the group of "female superheroes" that Smith began representing in the late 1990s. Imbued with nostalgia for her childhood and Catholic upbringing, and influenced by feminism as well as Victorian book illustrations and art historical sources, these female characters morph into vulnerable yet powerful symbols. In Smith’s interpretation of Red Riding Hood, male heroism and female victimhood make way for a tale of mystical strength and communion between two women, granddaughter and grandmother, who we see here emerging unscathed from the bleeding wolf, as if reborn through death.