Visible violence in Kiki Smith's Life wants to live.
Recent theoretical analyses of domestic violence have posited the complicity of medical communities in erasing and obfuscating the cause of injuries. Although medical cultures have engaged in progressive initiatives to address and treat domestic violence, these medical and clinical models can render domestic violence invisible by framing the battered woman as evidentiary object. By analyzing this invisibility of domestic violence through the concept of public secrecy, in this article I consider Kiki Smith's 1982 installation piece Life Wants to Live. Using medical technologies, Smith's installation offers the viewer a vision of domestic violence that recognizes its inherently problematic invisibility and emphasizes the importance of lived, bodily experience.
Coulthard
Lisa
L
Department of Theatre, Film and Creative Writing, University of British Columbia, Film Program Office, Brock Hall Annex 254A, 1874 East Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z1. coulthar@interchange.ubc.ca
D001154:Art / Q000266:history; D017579:Domestic Violence / Q000517:prevention & control*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D008512:Medicine in the Arts; D014481:United States; D014754:Violence