Lucy Kim is an interdisciplinary 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.





Currently on View:

Lucy Kim: Mutant Optics
Henry Art Gallery - University of Washington
July 20, 2024 - February 2, 2025
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Portraits from the ICA Collection
Institute of Contemporary Art Boston
Jan 25, 2025 – Jan 4, 2026
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Selected exhibitions:

Henry Art Gallery - University of Washington 
Museum of Fine Arts Boston 
Institute of Contemporary Art Boston
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard 
Institute of Fine Arts at New York University
DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum 
Tufts University Art Gallery 
Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore 
Brooklyn Academy of Music 
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)
Fused/Jessica Silverman Gallery (San Francisco, CA)
Lyles and King (New York, NY)


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 and Upcoming Panels:

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

In Conversation: Lucy Cotter and Lucy Kim on Artistic Research, Henry Art Gallery , January 23, 2025

Panelist, Poetic Record: Photography in a Transformed World, symposium at Princeton University organized by Deana Lawson, October 10 - 11, 2024

Speaker, Dermatology Grand Rounds, University of Washington Department of Dermatology, October 16, 2024

Panelist, Confronting Control: A Conversation with A.K. Burns, Lucy Kim, and Tala Madani moderated by Berette Macaulay, Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, October 19, 2024

Artists-in-Dialogue: Lucy Kim + Kirsten Adam on Human Perception in Art and Science, Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, October 24, 2024
Panelist, Material (Mis)Idenities: Art, Genes and Ethics, ELSI Friday Forum at the Center for ELSI Resources and Analysis (CERA), Columbia University Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics, November 8, 2024