KELLY AKASHI
b. 1983, United StatesKelly Akashi is a Japanese American sculptor based in Los Angeles whose work explores time, impermanence, and memory through materials including bronze, glass, wax, and stone. Originally trained in analog photography, she is best known for bronze and crystal casts of her hands that mark bodily changes over time, and for her survey exhibition Formations (2022–2024), which addressed her family’s incarceration in a Japanese American concentration camp during World War II. Her work is held in collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and Walker Art Center, and she is currently featured in the Whitney Biennial 2026.
Early Life and Career
Born in 1983 in Los Angeles, Akashi received her BFA from Otis College of Art & Design in 2006 and her MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014, also studying at the Städelschule in Frankfurt in 2010. Her practice evolved from analog photography toward sculpture, focusing on labor-intensive craft techniques including lost-wax bronze casting, glass-blowing, and stone carving. She gained significant visibility in the Hammer Museum‘s Made in L.A. 2016 biennial.
Works and Themes
Akashi’s sculptures often combine materials that transform from liquid to solid states—wax, bronze, glass, and silicone—to capture imprints of her body’s breath and touch. Her repeated hand casts in bronze and crystal record growing fingernails and deepening lifelines, serving as indexes of time passing. Works such as Life Forms (2023) pair cast bronze hands with hand-blown glass, creating impossible moments that defy gravity. She also creates enlarged casts of extinct shells, sculpted weeds, and a full-body travertine carving titled Long Exposure (2022) that engages with geological time.
Her practice is informed by mono no aware, the Japanese concept of wistful awareness of impermanence. In Formations, Akashi directly addressed her family history for the first time, using bronze casts of tree branches collected from the abandoned Poston, Arizona concentration camp where her father was imprisoned as a child. The exhibition toured from San José Museum of Art to the Frye Art Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2022–2024).
Recent Exhibitions and Recognition
Akashi’s solo exhibitions include Long Exposure at SculptureCenter, New York (2017), Cultivator at Aspen Art Museum (2020), Encounters at Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2023–2024), and Converging Figures at Fondazione Furla and Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan (2024). Group exhibitions include Roppongi Crossing 2025 at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2025–2026) and A Garden of Promise and Dissent at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2024–2025).
She received the MOCA Los Angeles Twelfth Distinguished Women in the Arts Award (2024), the LACMA Art + Technology Grant (2022), and the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize (2019). In 2026, Akashi was awarded the Hyundai Terrace Commission for the Whitney Biennial 2026 and a public sculpture commission for JFK Airport’s Terminal 1. She is represented by Lisson Gallery, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, and François Ghebaly Gallery.
Kelly Akashi FAQs
What is Kelly Akashi best known for?
Kelly Akashi is best known for her hybrid sculptures that combine bronze, glass, wax, and stone to explore time, impermanence, and bodily change. Her signature works include repeated bronze and crystal casts of her hands that record growing fingernails and deepening lifelines, as well as her survey exhibition Formations (2022–2024), which addressed her family’s imprisonment in a Japanese American concentration camp.
What techniques does Kelly Akashi use?
Akashi employs labor-intensive craft techniques including lost-wax bronze casting, hand-blown glass-making, stone carving, and silicone casting. She is particularly drawn to materials that transform from liquid to solid states, which allow her to capture literal imprints of her body’s breath and touch.
What themes does Kelly Akashi explore?
Akashi’s work explores time, impermanence, mortality, memory, and the relationship between human and geological time scales. Her practice is informed by mono no aware, the Japanese concept of wistful awareness of impermanence and the “pathos of things”. Through materially hybrid sculptures, she examines how objects convey their histories and potential for change.
Where can I see Kelly Akashi’s work in 2026?
Akashi’s work is featured in the Whitney Biennial 2026 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (March 8–August 23, 2026), including a site-specific Hyundai Terrace Commission. Her solo exhibition Heirloom is on view at Lisson Gallery, New York (13 May–25 July 2026). Her work is also held in permanent collections at LACMA, the Hammer Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
Ocula | 2026
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