The wolf is a cipher. It’s a talisman for girlhood fears. The stranger who lurks in the woods. The terror of being devoured by forces that are untameable. But for American artist Kiki Smith, the wolf both creates and destroys.
In , a 2002 lithograph, Smith reimagines . First published in 1697 by French writer Charles Perrault, it follows a girl who leads a wolf to her grandmother—and the wolf eats them both. subverts this narrative: the older woman wrenches the girl from the wolf’s bleeding belly. Their arms reach for each other, different versions of the same person. If asks girls to fear casts the animal, grandmother and girl as part of a web of interdependence. The grandmother isn’t frail. She isn’t someone else’s appetite. She emerges from the wolf’s body, fully formed.
