Narratives on Family, Community and Materials: L.A. Artist Kim Garcia

I Like Your Work: Conversations with Artists

Kim Garcia is an artist working in sculpture, drawing, and painting. Through her 2nd-generation Filipino American lens, her practice explores social dynamics and residual trauma from interpersonal relationships, community structures, and memory. Kim comes from a background in creating collaborative community projects that often employ alternative spaces to explore studio art practices, site-specific collaboration, and museum and exhibition research. She is the founder of The Cold Read, an online critique group and artist collective that engages gestures of care and support through writing and is one of the co-founders of after hours gallery, an art gallery in Los Angeles that hosts two-person exhibitions. Kim is based in Los Angeles and received her BA from UC San Diego and her MFA from UC Irvine.

"Through the fusion of reality and fiction, my work emerges from personal encounters, aiming to complicate narratives surrounding second-generation Filipino American histories. I delve into the intricacies of post-colonial identity, exploring themes of intimacy and influence stemming from social interactions. Sculptures form the vibrant outcome of the work, fictionalizing personal events to probe power dynamics, trauma, community structures, and memory. Utilizing materials like medical casting tape, my artworks simultaneously display trauma and symbolize healing. Gradient colors evoke movement, while layered hues express emotional complexity. The sculptures breathe life into color, activating motion and tension. I perceive my work as a form of storytelling, where the malleability of oral narratives inspires a nuanced approach to archiving personal histories. By combining sculpture, drawing, and painting, my hybrid material practice investigates enduring tensions accumulated over time, unearthing possibilities for constructing a future from a suppressed past."

LINKS:

https://kimgarcia.info/ @kimwantscoffee Artist Shout Out: Yubo Dong at of studio photography for the amazing documentation of my work. https://www.instagram.com/ofphotostudio/

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