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At Lisson Gallery, Kelly Akashi Gives Resilience Form

In "Heirloom," she translates her experiences in the aftermath of the L.A. fires into a meditation on inheritance, geological time and nature’s power to regenerate.

Following a much-celebrated L.A. debut with Lisson Gallery, Kelly Akashi is presenting a new body of sculptural work in New York that reflects on how loss and memory are carried and transformed over time. What Akashi has created in the West 24th Street space is a sequence of evocative moments in a reflection that is both deeply personal and universal. Delicate presences inspired by nature and traditional craft, rendered in bronze, Corten steel, flame-worked glass and stone, offer fragile moments of beauty, care and endurance—the artist’s transient forms maintaining a sense of organic vulnerability and change.

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Inspiring this body of work is Akashi’s recent engagement with the site of her former home and studio, destroyed by the L.A. wildfires in 2025. There, she observed nature returning, resiliently, amid the destruction. “This work”—a delicate glass sculpture of a plant—”began with a weed growing on my property, a mallow plant, which tends to take root on disturbed land. After destruction, when the soil has been broken apart, it spreads very aggressively,” she told Observer, as we walked through “Heirloom” ahead of the opening.

"Heirloom" Artist: Kelly Akashi Venue: Lisson Gallery Address: 508 West 24th Street, New York Through: July 25, 2026

She immortalized that weed in sculpture, which stands upside down over a Corten steel plinth, as if just uprooted from the soil. “I became interested in that contradiction: on one hand, the plant is regenerative and restorative, enriching the soil and helping it recover, but at the same time it takes over in a way that can feel invasive or difficult to control,” she explained. By presenting it upside down, she wanted it to feel unearthed, emphasizing roots, subterranean systems and what remains hidden beneath the surface.

On another pedestal, a reticular glass dome protects a fragile form, suggesting both containment and........

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