Lucy Kim is an artist working across painting, sculpture and biological media. In her hybrid works, she embraces distortion as a tool to deconstruct how we see what we see: the relationship between our evolved vision-centricity, constructed socio-cultural systems, and personal desires.

Kim is a recipient of a 2024 Howard Foundation Fellowship in the Emerging Arts and a 2022 Creative Capital Award for her project printing images with bacteria that has been genetically-modified to produce melanin. Melanin is the main bio-pigment behind human skin, hair, and eye color. She began this project while an artist-in-residence at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and continues to develop it at Boston University, where she teaches. Through this project, Kim expands her committed study of our visual habits, which she first began in her sculptural paintings using unconventional processes in the studio. Kim is based in Cambridge, MA and is Associate Professor of Art at Boston University. She is represented by Praise Shadows.





Recent and current exhibitions:


Ascendancy: the self in contemporary art
Mattatuck Museum
 March 1 - June 21, 2026Ann Agee | Laura Aguilar | Elia Alba | Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili | Beth Ann Altomonte | Janine Antoni | Elizabeth Atterbury | Colleen Barry | Creighton Baxter | Anna Betbeze | April Bey | Katherine Bradford | Anne Buckwalter | María Magdalena Campos-Pons | Caitlin Cherry | Nicole Cherubini | Namwon Choi | Jaina Cipriano | Yanira Collado | Anne Collier | Ryan Cosbert | Ann Craven | Taína H. Cruz | Kim Dacres | Lalla Essaydi | Tory Fair | Nona Faustine | fierce pussy (Nancy Brooks Brody, Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard, and Carrie Yamaoka) | Dana Frankfort | Regina José Galindo | Iliana Emilia García | larí garcía | Scherezade García | Alex Gingrow | Iva Gueorguieva | Ivy Haldeman | Anthea Hamilton | Rachel Harrison | Rose Hartman | Mona Hatoum | Clarity Haynes | Alicia Henry | Sheree Hovsepian | Juliana Huxtable | Paloma Izquierdo | Cheyenne Julien | Baseera Khan | Arghavan Khosravi | Lucy Kim | Autumn Knight | Justine Kurland | Annette Lemieux | Ellen Adventures in Art & History 144 West Main St. Waterbury, CT 06702 mattmuseum.org Lesperance & Jeanine Oleson | Maud Madsen | Vivian Maier | Anina Major | Malerie Marder | Delita Martin | Quintessa Matranga | Suzanne McClelland | Ana Mendieta | Helina Metaferia | Joiri Minaya | Yvette Molina | Azita Moradkhani | Rebecca Morris | Ebecho Muslimova | Samantha Nye | Toyin Ojih Odutola | Paola Oxoa | Chloe Piene | Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki-Olivo) | Magali Reus | Carissa Rodriguez | Mika Rottenberg | Heather Rowe | Carolee Schneemann | Beverly Semmes | Lorna Simpson | Suzannah Sinclair | Karina Aguilera Skvirsky | Tabitha Soren | Vivian Springford | Elizabeth King Stanton | Brooke Stewart | Stephanie Syjuco | Dannielle Tegeder | Kaari Upson | Sara VanDerBeek | Gelsy Verna | Marnie Weber | Summer Wheat | Philemona Williamson | Deborah Willis | Qualeasha Wood | Francesca Woodman | Saya Woolfalk | Huidi Xiang | Kennedy Yanko | Leyla Yenirce | Anicka Yi

Bio Morphe
Moody Center for the Arts - Rice University
September 5 - December 20, 2025 Louise Bourgeois, Eva Fabregas, Tishan Hsu, Lucy Kim, Berenice Olmedo, Sui Park, Christina Quarles

Portraits from the ICA Collection
Institute of Contemporary Art Boston
Jan 25, 2025 – Jan 4, 2026

Select exhibitions:

Henry Art Gallery - University of Washington (Seattle, WA)
Museum of Fine Arts Boston (Boston, MA)
Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (Boston, MA)
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (Cambridge, MA)
Institute of Fine Arts at New York University (New York, NY)
DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, MA)
Tufts University Art Gallery (Medford, MA)
Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore (Saratoga Springs, NY)
Praise Shadows (Boston, MA)
Oddkin (East Providence, RI)
Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY)
Galerie Pact (Paris, France)
Lundgren Gallery (Mallorca, Spain)
Lisa Cooley (New York, NY)
Hesse Flatow (New York, NY)
Jessica Silverman Gallery (San Francisco, CA)
Lyles and King (New York, NY)
Moody Center for the Arts (Houston, TX)

Education:

Rhode Island School of Design (BFA Painting 2001)
Yale University School of Art (MFA Painting and Printmaking 2007)

Recognitions:

Leslie and Brad Bucher Artist-in-Residence, Moody Center for the Arts (2024)
Howard Foundation Fellowship (2024)
Brother Thomas Fellowship (2023)
Creative Capital Award (2022)
Artist-in-residence, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (2018-2021)
Hermitage Fellowship (2021)
Mass Cultural Council Grant (2019)
ICA Boston James and Audrey Foster Prize (2017)
Artadia Award (2014)
MacDowell Fellowship (2007)
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2005)
Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship (2001) 

Press:

The New Yorker
Bomb Magazine
The Boston Globe
The New York Times
The Brooklyn Rail
Art Papers
ARTNews
Artforum
Juxtapoz
Boston Art Review
The Stranger

Collections:

MIT List Visual Arts Center
Institute of Contemporary Art Boston
KADIST collection
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
New York Public Library
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Recent Panels:

Artist Talk: Lucy Kim and Mitra Abbaspour, Curator and Head of Modern and Contemporary Art at Harvard Art Museums
 Praise Shadows Art Gallery
June 3, 2025 6:30-7:30pm 

Artists in Academia: artistic research as practice
Luis Arnías, Lucy Cotter, and Lucy Kim, moderated by Laurel Vera Mclaughlin
Tufts University Art Galleries
April 16, 2025

Mutant Optics: A Conversation with Lucy Kim, Osagie K. Obasogie, and Linda Oyesiku, moderated by Temi Odumosu
 Henry Art Gallery
January 25, 2025

Panelist, Poetic Record: Photography in a Transformed World
Organized by Deana Lawson
Symposium at Princeton University Lewis Center for the Arts
October 10 - 11, 2024