Installation view, Kelly Akashi: Formations, San José Museum of Art (September 3, 2022–May 21, 2023). Courtesy of San José Museum of Art. Photo credit: Frederick Liang.


Kelly Akashi: Formations is the Los Angeles-based artist’s first museum survey. Originally trained in photography, Akashi is known for her craft-based, conceptual practice that combines materials such as glass and wax with imagery drawn from the natural world and the human body. Curated by Schell Dickens of the San José Museum of Art (SJMA), Formations presents nearly a decade of work alongside a new series in which the artist explores her heritage, including the imprisonment of her father in a Japanese American incarceration camp during World War II. 




Kelly Akashi, Inheritance, 2021. Poston stone, cast lead crystal, heirloom (grandmother's ring), Courtesy of the artist, François Ghebaly Gallery, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. 

The presentation at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is organized by Jill Dawsey. Since joining the Museum in 2011, Dawsey has organized several significant exhibitions that have connected local history and experience. Formations lends itself to public discourse in an era of resurgent anti-Asian bigotry and violence and a reflection on the history of Japanese incarceration and settlements in Southern California. Taking cues from Akashi’s interest in the evolution of landscapes through both organic and inorganic processes, the exhibition also explores the culture and politics of land ownership, occupation, and stewardship in the region.




Installation view, Kelly Akashi: Formations, San José Museum of Art (September 3, 2022–May 21, 2023). Courtesy of San José Museum of Art. Photo credit: Frederick Liang.


Programming addressing these issues will complement the exhibition's 34 large-scale and intimate sculptures and new photographic series. MCASD will partner with Pacific Arts Movement on its annual San Diego Asian Film Festival, which features both Asian American and international Asian cinema. Sites with relevance to the history of Japanese incarceration and displacement in and around MCASD’s flagship and downtown locations have been identified for programs intended to elevate community understanding of these histories and their impact on the area.

After its presentation in San Jose, the Kelly Akaski: Formations will travel to the Frye Art Museum in Seattle in June 2023 before arriving at MCASD in September 2023. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog featuring essays by Dickens, Ruba Katrib, Dr. Jenni Sorkin, and a conversation between Akashi and painter Julien Nguyen. 

Jill Dawsey is Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Her recent exhibitions include Carmen Argote: Filtration System for a Process-Based Practice (2022); Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s (2022, co-curated with Michelle White); and Yolanda López: Portrait of the Artist (2021). Past projects include Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo: 42 Artists from San Diego and Tijuana (2018) and The Uses of Photography: Art, Politics, and the Reinvention of a Medium (2016, University of California Press). She has organized solo exhibitions with artists Scoli Acosta, Edgar Arceneaux, Andrea Chung, Yve Laris Cohen, Colter Jacobsen, Adriana Lara, and Xaviera Simmons, among others. Previously, Dawsey held curatorial posts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah. She attended Bryn Mawr College, the Whitney Independent Study Program, and received a Ph.D. in art history from Stanford University.

Lauren Schell Dickens is Chief Curator at the San José Museum of Art. Since joining the museum in 2016 as curator, she has organized major exhibitions including Our whole, unruly selves (2021), Undersoul: Jay DeFeo (2019), With Drawn Arms: Glenn Kaino and Tommie Smith (2019), Other Walks, Other Lines (2018), and The House Imaginary (2018). She has organized solo exhibitions and projects with Diana Al-Hadid, Rina Banerjee, Sadie Barnette, Sofia Cordova, Woody de Othello, Brendan Fernandes, Sky Hopinka, Glenn Kaino, Aislinn Thomas, and Lara Schnitger, among others. Prior to SJMA, Dickens held curatorial positions at the National Gallery of Art and Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. She received her B.A. from Yale University and her M.A. from Columbia University. She is a 2019  Warhol Curatorial Research Fellow and recipient of the Fellows of Contemporary Art 2022 Curators Award.    

Kalaija Mallery, The Luminary