JACQUELINE KIYOMI GORK

In a 2025 interview with Jonathan Griffin for Ocula Magazine, Gork reflected: ‘Sometimes I think of myself as a choreographer more than a composer—what I’m actually manipulating is how people move and gather, and how they listen together.’ Through sonic architectures and material interventions, her practice invites audiences to question the social and performative boundaries embedded in acoustic spaces.

Early Years and Background

Born in Long Beach in 1982, Gork studied fine art at the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) before completing an MFA at Stanford University, where her research centred on acoustic history, computer music, and the politics of listening. Based in Los Angeles, she draws from a background in both visual art and experimental music, frequently referencing her Japanese American heritage and the cultural dynamics of the spaces in which her works are shown.

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork Artworks

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork creates immersive installations that complicate distinctions between sound, sculpture, and architecture, transforming galleries into ‘instruments’ shaped by visitor movement and interaction. It was after an encounter with the minimalist composer La Monte Young’s Dream House in 2002, Gork—who also trained in dance—began connecting her penchant for movement with what she was hearing.

As she told Ocula: ‘I’ve always wanted my environments to make people more sensitive or aware of their own movement, their own choices. It’s one hundred percent an instrument’.

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork’s practice has unfolded through a succession of major exhibitions and works that demonstrate her ongoing exploration of sound, architecture, and embodied listening. Here is a chronological summary of developments and significant milestones in her career:

• Gork began her career with projects in San Francisco such as Dream Blankets (A Little Display Gallery, 2005) and SYNAH Sometimes You Need A Hole (San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, 2008), experimenting with fabricated textiles and sound-absorbing materials.
• Our Best Machines are Made of Sunshine (Queens Nails Projects, 2009) furthered her interest in how materials structure the sonic experience in visual art contexts.
• Exhibitions like No Touch (Eli Ridgway Gallery, 2012) and Inside You is Me: Variation 1 (The Lab, 2016) marked a move towards large-scale installations leveraging feedback systems and spatial arrangements to intervene in how audiences listen and move.
• Not Exactly B Flat (356 Mission Rd, LA, 2017) and Catchy (Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, 2017) introduced signature use of felt, vinyl, and acoustic foam in built environments, sharpening her focus on architectural sonic phenomena.
• Participated in group exhibitions including Soundtracks at SFMoMA (2017), SculptureCenter in New York (2019), and Made in L.A. at Hammer Museum (2020), exploring collective ‘listening spaces’ and psychoacoustic perception.
• Olistostrome (Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, 2021) and Solutions to Common Noise Problems (François Ghebaly, NYC, 2022) combined ‘acoustic sculptures’ with custom digital sound processing to redefine spatial agency and listener participation.
• Variations in Mass, #1-3 (Various Small Fires, LA, 2020) offered kinetic sculptures and timed sound performances, uniting inflation/deflation cycles with synchronised sonic choreography.
• In 2023, the solo shows Poems of Electronic Air at Carpenter Center, Harvard, Like a Breath of Fresh Water at UTVA Austin, and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork at ICA LA marked the most comprehensive presentations of her work in museum contexts, exploring “mazes” and the invisible agency of acoustic design.
• The 2025 work, presented in Gama at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong (2025), pushes further into networked speaker arrays and textile forms, foregrounding feedback and the dancer-listener relationship.

Awards and Collections

• Gork’s work has entered major institutional collections, including SFMoMA, Hammer Museum, Walker Art Center, and Berkeley Art Museum, and she is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2023), Gold Art Prize (2025), and multiple foundation grants.

This evolving body of work has consistently foregrounded how installations can materialise ‘the architecture of listening,’ disrupting static boundaries between noise and music, performer and audience, and the architectures in which we listen.

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork Exhibitions

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork has exhibited internationally at major museums and respected galleries. Below is a selection of important exhibitions.

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Gama, Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, 2025
• Like a Breath of Fresh Water, University of Texas Visual Arts Center, Austin, 2024
• Poems of Electronic Air, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, 2024
• Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2023

Select Group Exhibitions

• SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago, 2025
• Made in L.A., Hammer Museum and The Huntington, Los Angeles, 2020
• Searching the Sky for Rain, SculptureCenter, New York, 2019
• Soundtracks, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 2018

To be kept up to date with upcoming exhibitions featuring Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, follow her on Ocula.

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork FAQs

Ocula | 2025