Kelly Akashi

Born in 1983 in Los Angeles, Kelly Akashi currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. The artist graduated with a MFA from University of Southern California in 2014. Akashi studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and received her BFA at Otis College of Art and Design in 2006.
 
In 2020, Akashi had a solo exhibtion of a commissioned sculpture, Cultivator, at the Aspen Art Museum. Winner of the 2019 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize the artist had a residency at the foundation in Ojai, California. Other residencies include ARCH Athens, Greece (2019) and at Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA (2019) – both of which concluded with a solo exhibition. Other important solo exhibitions include Long Exposure curated by Ruba Katrib at the SculptureCenter, New York (2017). The artist’s work is currently featured in Ground/work at the Clark Art Institute and Possédé·e·s at MoCo Montpellier Contemporain in France. Other notable group exhibitions include the Hammer Museum’s biennial, Made in L.A. (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2017); LA: A Fiction, Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France (2017); Take me (I’m Yours), curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jens Hoffmann, and Kelly Taxter, Jewish Museum, New York (2016); Can’t Reach Me There, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2015).

Kelly 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; CC Foundation, Shanghai; X Museum, Beijing; The Perimeter, London; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Sifang Museum, Nanjing, among others.