UCI Visiting Artist Lecture Series (VALS)

Kelly Akashi

Tuesday, April 23, 2024, 12 p.m. PST

Contemporary Arts Center, Colloquium Room, 3rd Floor

This talk will be held in-person and live streamed on Zoom (see link details below) 

The Department of Art presents the Visiting Artist Lecture Series (VALS). The annual series, organized by graduate students in Art, invites artists, scholars, curators, critics, gallerists and writers to give public lectures and conduct studio visits with students relevant to graduate students' research and practice. The series will be in-person and live streamed. Please visit the VALS webpage for links and information on other events in the series.

About the Artist

Kelly Akashi was born and is based in Los Angeles, CA. Material tactility, its possibilities, limitations, and transformation form the core of Kelly Akashi's practice. Originally trained in analog photography, Akashi's visual language emphasizes the impermanence of the natural world, recording and indexing fragmented moments in time. Always a student, Akashi is perpetually studying new practices and physical techniques such as glass-blowing, casting, candle-making and stone carving.

She recently concluded a major solo traveling exhibition entitled Formations, of which was accompanied by the publication of the first in-depth monograph on the artist. The exhibition traveled from the San Jose Museum of Art, to the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle, and to the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego (2022-2024). Other important solo exhibitions include, Encounters, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2023); Cultivator, Aspen Art Museum (2020); a thing among things, ARCH Athens, Greece (2019); and Long Exposure curated by Ruba Katrib, SculptureCenter, New York (2017). 

She is a winner of the 2024 MOCA Distinguished Women in the Arts Award, the 2022 LACMA Art + Technology Grant, and the 2019 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize. 

Akashi’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and San Diego; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford; CC Foundation, Shanghai; X Museum, Beijing; The Perimeter, London; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Sifang Museum, Nanjing, among others.

VALS is presented with generous support from The Claire Trevor Society, the CTSA Dean's Fund for Excellence, and UCI Illuminations.. 

For remote access: 

Zoom Link

Time: Friday, May 3, 12 p.m. PST

Join Zoom Meeting
https://uci.zoom.us/j/96310394799
Meeting ID: 963 1039 4799

Free admission

Discounted Advance Pre-Paid Parking Permits Reserve at least the day before the event.

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