Kelly Akashi’s First Museum Solo Show Included a Range of Mediums

The artist’s photographs, as well as sculptures that are hand-blown, cast, or carved, are on view at the San Jose Museum of Art.

Witness, 2022 (Gelatin silver mounted on aluminum in hand patinaed aluminum artist’s frame, 40.5 by 63 inches)

Kelly Akashi, ’06 BFA Fine Arts

Formations is decidedly nonchronological. I don’t see my practice as isolated bodies of work; I always try to keep my mind on the greater lifelong practice. So it’s been exciting to see similar themes and questions arise in works that were made years apart, sharing rooms together in conversation.

These photographs were taken in Poston, Arizona, where my father, his parents, and his siblings were interned during World War II. They had to leave their Boyle Heights home—and my grandfather’s business in Little Tokyo—and had no idea how long they would be gone. The artist David Horvitz, who is also Japanese American, told me that the trees that still stand on these sites were most likely planted by the people interned there. Many of the interned Japanese Americans came from agricultural backgrounds, and apparently, they built ponds, cultivated the land, had harvests, and added these trees. The trees, along with some barracks and an adobe brick schoolhouse, are all that remain, and they won’t live forever. —As told to Juliana Halpert in Artforum

Installation view of Kelly Akashi: Formations at the San Jose Museum of Art

Witness, 2022 (Gelatin silver mounted on aluminum in hand patinaed aluminum artist's frame, 40.5 x 63 inches )

Witness, 2022 (Gelatin silver mounted on aluminum in hand patinaed aluminum artist's frame, 60.5 by 41.25 inches)

Inheritance, 2022 (Poston stone, cast lead crystal, and heirloom [grandmother’s broach], 3.25 by 6 by 3.25 inches)

Inheritance, 2022 (Poston stone, cast lead crystal, and heirloom [grandmother’s bracelet and ring], 4.5 by 6.5 by 6.5 inches)

Kelly Akashi: Formations is the first major museum exhibition and catalog of Akashi’s work, and was on view through May 21, 2023 at the San Jose Museum of Art before touring nationally. Her work also can be found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Brooklyn Museum, New York; CC Foundation, Shanghai, China; M WOODS, Beijing, China; and Sifang Museum, Nanjing, China, among others. You can read more about Akashi on her website, and follow her on Instagram, @citizenbong.

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