The Hyundai Terrace Commission is a program launched in 2024 by Hyundai Motor and the Whitney to give artists and curators room for creative experimentation beyond conventional formats, the company said.
Akashi, the third artist selected for the commission, was born in the United States in 1983 and is based in Los Angeles. She has worked with materials including glass, bronze and stone, exploring themes of life and the limits of existence.
For the Whitney presentation, Akashi will introduce new works spanning installation, sculpture and animation, drawing on personal experience.
The exhibition centers on “Monument (Altadena)” (2026), which reconstructs in glass bricks a chimney and the walkway leading to it — the only part left after a wildfire in northern Los Angeles in January last year destroyed the artist’s home and studio. Installed on the museum’s fifth-floor terrace, the work reframes the space as a site for reflection on survival, loss and the incompleteness of what remains.
Also on view is “Inheritance (Distressed)” (2026), inspired by the lace doily of the artist’s grandmother that was lost in the same fire. The work raises questions about how inherited legacies should be treated and remembered.
The exhibition’s broader material inquiry into traces, memory and aftereffects extends to an animated work, “Remnants (Constellations)” (2026), shown on a large outdoor media wall on the terrace.
“Rebuilding is not simply restoration, but a practice that symbolizes devoted labor and a dialogue with history,” Akashi said. “The process of stacking bricks one by one projects memory itself, and memory regains meaning through constant attention and patience.”
“Each brick contains a record of the labor and transformation it has undergone, and together they become a new presence that holds traces of the past,” she said.
Whitney curator Marcela Guerrero said Akashi “skillfully handles a range of materials, including glass and steel, and has harmoniously realized the conceptual and technical completeness essential to large-scale outdoor sculpture.”
A Hyundai Motor official said the company hopes the exhibition will prompt audiences to reconsider the relationship between individuals and communities and to explore the possibility of genuine solidarity, in line with the commission’s aim of bringing artistic inspiration to more people.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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