KIM Kira, who studied glass at the Rhode Island School of Design, has made a significant contribution to introducing American studio glass to Korea. Since 2005, she has been active internationally as the only Korean board member of the Glass Art Society (GAS), playing a key role in expanding Korean glass art onto the global stage as a first-generation artist in the field.
Building on her background in ceramics, KIM Kira has developed a distinctive practice that combines painterly surfaces with sculptural structures in glass. By thermally fusing cast glass blocks, she creates textures reminiscent of glaze and lacquer, revealing both transparency and opacity. Architectural elements such as houses, windows, and staircases recur in her work, functioning as symbolic devices for memory and inner space. Through cubist compositions and layered structures, her works evoke a sense of overlapping time and space, with glass operating as a medium between painting and sculpture.
She has participated in major international exhibitions at institutions including the Toyama Glass Art Museum, Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, and Palais de Tokyo. In 2024, she was selected as a finalist for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize. Her works are held in major collections such as the Seoul Museum of Craft Art, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), and the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung. She continues her practice as a full-time artist, pursuing ongoing material experimentation.
“Through my work, I metaphorically express reflections on everyday life through ordinary objects—my life, the loss of loved ones, and experiences in nature. I explore inherent dualities such as the visible and invisible, moment and eternity, fullness and emptiness, light and darkness, strength and fragility through the material properties of glass—its transparency, translucency, and opacity—seeking a new sculptural language. By approaching objects from a non-ordinary, cubistic perspective, I aim to encounter fundamental questions. The imagined visions in the drawing process and the results that emerge as they are realized in three-dimensional form continue to fascinate me. While my work in the mid-1980s and 1990s pursued fluidity through cubistic rearrangement, since the 2000s I have reflected on my cultural identity as a Korean glass artist, seeking to integrate the tonal gradation and linear qualities of ink painting into the transparent imagery of glass.”
