Lotus L. Kang: I hear the hollow boom of time

Lotus L. Kang creates installations that respond to the spaces they inhabit and reveal the surprising possibilities of ‘misusing’ materials—specifically, the tools of photography. In her largest museum exhibition to date, she presents two major new installations alongside a series of works on paper, all developed in dialogue with the Frye Art Museum’s distinctive architecture.

Interweaving poetic reflections on memory, translation, and inheritance, Kang works iteratively, revisiting forms and materials across her artworks. For the Frye, she creates an installation featuring large sheets of unfixed industrial film that have been exposed to varied light sources in a process she calls “tanning,” likening the film’s sensitive surface to skin. Sculptures using tatami mats as their foundation punctuate the spaces between the suspended, cascading film sheets. Secondly, Kang will present a kinetic sculpture: evoking an enlarged ribcage, a rotating drum wrapped in celluloid film projects shifting bands of color and light throughout the gallery, its motion timed to a rhythmic score based on lines of poetry.

Together, these works embrace leaky boundaries—between inside and outside, life and death, deterioration and regeneration—exploring how we are continually shaped and transformed by the environments we move through.

This exhibition includes a room that features low light levels that may be disorienting. Please navigate the space with caution.