KELLY AKASHI

Early Years

Born in Los Angeles in 1983 to Japanese American parents, Kelly Akashi was inspired by Nan Goldin and trained in photography at Otis College of Art and Design. Graduating in 2006 with a BFA, she told Art Basel in 2023 that “Everyone was so excited about the potential of digital that there was an assumption that darkrooms would be dead within 10 years.” Briefly taking up painting, she then transferred her artistic practice to sculpture, enjoying the tactile experience, which she found reminiscent of making a negative into a photographic print. She studied at Städelschule in Frankfurt in 2010, then gained her MFA at the University of Southern California in 2014.

Kelly Akashi: Artworks

Kelly Akashi marries concept and process in her sculptural practice, which focuses on the impermanence of the natural world. Hands are a recurring motif in her work, suggesting the passing of time via ageing flesh or lengthening fingernails. Her interest in time crosses into studies of the natural world, for example using shells, flowers and rocks as points of departure for considering questions of the idea of existence itself.

• Akashi lost her home and studio in the 2025 LA wildfires and in 2026’s Heirloom exhibition she expanded her devastation at the destruction of key pillars of her existence into a wider examination of grief and loss. The outsized Monument (Heirloom) (2026) is a large-scale re-creation of her grandmother’s ring, which did not survive the blaze. Relying on memory and zooming in on her fingers in photographs for visual inspiration, she chose to make the reproduced ring giant because of its huge personal significance.
• In the same exhibition, Akashi used glass to add elements of fragility to the artworks. A glass version of the mallow plant, complete with root system, was symbolic of the emergence of biodiversity following the quelling of the fires.
• Botanical and natural themes of impermanence are also evident in Akashi’s earlier work, such as 2024’s Time Twine, a suspended sculpture featuring blown-glass flowers inspired by Mexican marigolds (the flowers of Día de los Muertos), bringing together memory and fragility.

Kelly Akashi: Select Public Commissions

• As part of the Whitney Biennial 2026, Kelly Akashi was commissioned to create a site-specific installation on the museum’s fifth-floor outdoor gallery. Following the loss of her home and 2tdio in the 2025 LA wildfires, she produced Monument (Altadena), a glass-brick recreation of her chimney, the only part of her home left standing. This stood alongside Inheritance (Distressed), a Cor-Ten steel reproduction of one of her grandmother’s doilies (lost in the fire) and an examination of how female artists consider family histories.
• The international terminal at New York’s John F Kennedy Airport, scheduled to open between 2026 and 2030, will feature a 5.5-metre (18-foot) sculpture by Kelly Akashi, one of seven site-specific artworks by international artists celebrating the history, culture and diversity of New York and the borough of Queens. Migration of Flora will depict native flowers rising from a bronze hand, which symbolise New York’s strength, togetherness and international influence.

Kelly Akashi: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Kelly Akashi: Heirloom, Lisson Gallery, New York City (2026)
• Kelly Akashi, Lisson Gallery, Los Angeles (2025)
• Converging Figures Fondazione Furla and The Galleria d_Arte Moderna, Milan (2024)
• Encounters, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2023)
• Formations, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego and Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2023)
• Infinite Body, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York City (2023)
• Life Forms, Barbati Gallery, Venice, (2022)
• Faultline, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2021)
• Cultivator, Outdoor Sculpture Project, Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2021)
• Mood Organ, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York City (2020)
• Cultivator, Aspen Crown Commons, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2020)
• Residency exhibition, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito (2019)
• a thing among things, Arch, Athens (2019)
• Figure Shifter, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2019)
• Shadow Film, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2018)
• Long Exposure, SculptureCenter, Queens, New York City (2017)
• Being as a Thing, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2016)
• &, Tomorrow Gallery, New York City (2015)
• HxVxT, Between Arrival & Departure, Düsseldorf (2015)
• SSOftllY, Michael Jon Gallery, Miami (2015)
• Mirror Image, MFA thesis show, USC, Los Angeles (2014)
• Hit Me Lightning, Chin_s Push, Highland Park (2013)
• Silver Strand, 3001 Gallery at USC, Los Angeles (2011)
• w’o mhnwa e mx mjgg nxc dxojm twae wok xhmam tjhj, Beige Cube, Frankfurt (2010)

Select Group Exhibitions

• An Incomplete Survey on Portraiture. Vol 1 Galerie Hussenot, Paris (2026)
• Whitney Biennial 2026 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2026)
• Roppongi Crossing 2025: What Passes Is Time. We Are Eternal., Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2025)
• Woman in a Rowboat Olivia Foundation, Mexico City (2025)
• On Ma, Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon (2024)
• Eyes Unspoken Adler Beatty, New York City (2024)
• I’ve got a feeling: The five senses in contemporary art, Musée des Beaux-Arts d_’ngers, Angers (2023)
• Imperfect Paradise, Barbati Gallery, Venice (2023)
• Durian on the Skin, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2022)
• Four Flags Kunst in de Heilige Driehoek, Oosterhout (2021)
• The Inconstant World, ICA LA, Los Angeles (2021)
• Winterfest, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2020)
• Eureka! Creativity in California: Artists of the Golden State at the Governor’s Mansion, Sacramento (2020)
• Bad Peach, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2019)
• Seeing Believing Having Holding, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik (2018)
• 99 Cents or Less, Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2017)
• Streams of Warm Impermanence, David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2016)
• And There is an End II, James Harris Gallery, Seattle (2015)

Further Reading

• Kelly Akashi’s Instagram
• Artist profile page at Lisson Gallery
• 2026 interview from The New York Times
• Ocula magazine interview from 2024
• Vanity Fair interview from 2026

Kelly Akashi FAQs

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