Artist Lotus L. Kang Creates Sculptural Works that Examine Memory and Time

It’s uncommon for artists to allow their work to evolve without or beyond them, but Lotus L. Kang trusts the process. In her current exhibit at the Frye Art Museum, “Lotus L. Kang: I hear the hollow boom of time,” the Toronto-based photographer, sculptor, and installation artist offers an unconventional study of the body and its ever-mutable relationship with time and place.

Georgia Erger, a curator at the Frye, has long been a fan of Kang, who is known for her works that “misuse” materials to illustrate themes of impermanence, memory, and the sensitivity of boundaries. Erger saw one of Kang’s early exhibits in 2018 and was blown away. “I still scroll back to that exhibit in my camera roll, because it moved me and stuck with me,” she told the Emerald. 

Kang’s installation, years in the making, is an open-ended conversation that allowed her to create new works for her show at the Frye. Erger shared that Kang’s work, which pushes the boundaries of photography and sculpture, fits with the Frye’s curatorial program and its mission for visitors to have unexpected encounters with modern art. “We also want to help living artists move their artistic practice forward and realize their missions,” she said. 

Visitors won’t immediately recognize what’s happening in “I hear the hollow boom of time,” named from a line in a novel by the late Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. The two-room exhibit is quietly contemplative in its layers, encouraging visitors to sit with the materials rather than constructing a cohesive narrative, though there is a clear throughline to the exhibit: “Everything is constantly in transformation and has a life cycle, so each viewer will have a different experience,” said Erger. The title treatments reflect this journey, as in the case of “Molt (Toronto-Chicago-Woodridge-New York-Seattle-)”, which refers to the continually transforming appearance of photographic film sheets used in the piece and the locations where the piece was and is exhibited. 

Kang’s work is largely iterative, revisiting forms and materials over time. “I hear the hollow boom of time” expands the use and meaning of materials like film, magnets, aluminum, steel, and bronze in relation to the human body, “accruing the impressions of its environment, the residue of the world,” offered Erger. Kang even uses the term “tanning” to describe the process of exposing sheets of unfixed industrial film to varied light sources, likening their surfaces to sensitive skin. 

Kang participated in the Whitney Biennial 2024, and according to Whitney Museum of Art, her work incorporates references to “bojagi, a Korean quilt-making technique, and Korean kitchen supply stores she encountered in her upbringing.” In her show at the Frye, Kang uses unconventional materials to create an intimacy with the human body and experience without relying on a traditional depiction. The kinetic sculpture “Azaleas III” “evokes an enlarged ribcage,” according to the Frye’s website. The motion of its shifting bands of color and light is intentionally timed to the rhythm of influential poetry, and draws the viewer’s eye to cast-bronze sculptures at the corner of the gallery, seemingly in homage to memento mori motifs. 

Erger called Kang’s installation “a poetic interpretation of decay in relation and opposition to technology.” The artist juxtaposes natural materials like cabbage leaves with machinery, creating an inconstant experience for viewers that incorporates the traditionally precise, highly technical medium of photography. The effect relates film to light and to the senses in a unique, boundary-pushing manner. 

In “I hear the hollow boom of time,” Kang models an artistic process that balances clear intention, inviting nature and time to do what they will. What was and what is co-exist, with no speculation of the future; visitors must simply see what the days and experience give.

Exhibition Info: “Lotus L. Kang: I hear the hollow boom of time” is on display at the Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave., through Sept. 7. 

This article is published under a Seattle Human Services Department grant, “Resilience Amidst Hate,” in response to anti-Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander violence.