Although Kiki Smith’s oeuvre broaches an expansive array of subjects, her most resonant creative interest concerns the body in all its frailty and brutality. Using delicate materials such as wax, mud, and glass, Smith regards sculpture as a means of “describing our relationship with other people’s physicality.” In Mother she explores the primal relationship between mother and child. The feet in this work are casts of those of Smith’s mother. The large drops of glass scattered around them suggest tears shed over the emotions that exist at the core of mother-daughter relationships—attachment, rebellion, love, separation, and loss.