Back to Our Collection Back to Featured in Our Collection Back to Artists Back to Artist Back to Featured Artists 
Kelly Akashi
Incised Reliquary (Sweetgum Pod)
2025
Weathering steel, incised acrylic, 23 carat gold leaf, on board
14 x 14 x 1 1/2 in.
© Kelly Akashi. Photo courtesy of Lisson Gallery.
Kelly Akashi is a contemporary artist known for conceptual installations and sculptures that incorporate craft techniques such as glass-blowing, casting, candle-making and stone carving. Born in Los Angeles, she studied at Otis College of Art and Design, the University of South California, and the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt. Akashi’s artwork often emphasis the tactility of touch and certain human features—hands are a recurring motif—closing the distance between conceptual practice, craft, and human experience. Her major solo museum exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art in 2023 featured a series in which Akashi explored the inherited impact of her family’s imprisonment in a Japanese American incarceration camp during World War II.
Akashi is represented at Lisson Gallery and her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Sifang Museum, Nanjing, China; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among others. Read more
Akashi is represented at Lisson Gallery and her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Sifang Museum, Nanjing, China; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among others. Read more
Loading