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Art & Design Hyundai Motor and the Whitney Museum of American Art Present Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi as part of Whitney Biennial 2026
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Art & Design Hyundai Motor and the Whitney Museum of American Art Present Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi as part of Whitney Biennial 2026
Art & Design Hyundai Motor and the Whitney Museum of American Art Present Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi as part of Whitney Biennial 2026
Art & Design Hyundai Motor and the Whitney Museum of American Art Present Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi as part of Whitney Biennial 2026
Art & Design Hyundai Motor and the Whitney Museum of American Art Present Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi as part of Whitney Biennial 2026
Art & Design Hyundai Motor and the Whitney Museum of American Art Present Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi as part of Whitney Biennial 2026
Art & Design Hyundai Motor and the Whitney Museum of American Art Present Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi as part of Whitney Biennial 2026
Hyundai Motor and the Whitney Museum of American Art Present Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi as part of Whitney Biennial 2026
SEOUL/NEW YORK, March 4, 2026 – Hyundai Motor Company and the Whitney Museum of American Art today announced the opening of Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi, a site-specific presentation by Los Angeles-based artist Kelly Akashi on Whitney’s fifth-floor outdoor gallery. This marks the third Hyundai Terrace Commission since the 10-year partnership between Hyundai Motor and the Whitney was established in 2024. Part of the Whitney Biennial 2026, on view from March 8 through August 23, 2026, the commission brings together a new sculptural installation, steel relief, works on paper, and an outdoor-screen animation across the Whitney’s terrace and adjacent spaces.
Anchoring the presentation is Monument (Altadena) (2026), a chimney and walkway installation that takes shape as both reconstruction and memorial. After Akashi’s home and studio burned in the Eaton Fire in January 2025, the chimney was the only structure left standing. For the Hyundai Terrace Commission, the artist has worked with a mason to reconstruct the chimney piece by piece alongside a reconstruction of her home’s pathway, rendered in luminous cast glass brick. Installed on the terrace, the work transforms the Whitney’s outdoor gallery into a charged site of witness and a meditation on survival, rupture, and the fragile permanence of what remains.
Also on the terrace, Inheritance (Distressed) (2026) is installed on the bulkhead south of Monument (Altadena). The work draws from a personal archive, Akashi’s grandmother’s doilies, which the artist rescued from a family garage sale and later lost in the same fire. Combining images generated from pre-fire scans with weathering steel (Cor-Ten), a material historically associated with Minimalist sculpture and coded masculinity, the work brings two histories into contact: one intimate and one cultural which reflects on the struggle to know what to do with what we inherit.
Inside the museum, Imprints (2026) comprises five framed works on paper. On the terrace’s outdoor screen, Remnants (Constellations) (2026) extends the presentation into moving image, offering an animated counterpart to the exhibition’s material investigations of trace, memory, and aftermath.
The act of rebuilding is not simply about material endurance; it is a deliberate labor of care, an engagement with history, and an act of reclamation. In laying each brick, my sculpture mirrors the gestures of memory itself, emphasizing that remembrance is not given, it is constructed through care and persistence. Each brick carries the record of labor and material transformation; together, they compose a new body that holds the traces of its past.
Artist
For the Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi, we were drawn to Kelly for her command of multiple mediums, and in particular for her skillful use of glass and steel. She has met the technical and conceptual demands of large-scale outdoor sculpture with aplomb, producing a monumental work that stands as a resolute testament to remembrance and the legacies that shape our collective and individual histories.
DeMartini Family Curator of Whitney Museum of American Art
Weaving together intimate personal histories with broader collective narratives, Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi offers a moment to reflect on memory and resilience. It challenges us to consider the potential for a solidarity that transcends the individual to embrace the communal, aligning with the Hyundai Terrace Commission’s commitment to sharing transformative artistic experiences with a wider audience.
Art Director of Hyundai Motor Company
Driven by a shared commitment to presenting the most relevant art and ideas of our time, Hyundai Motor’s multiyear partnership with the Whitney includes support for both the Hyundai Terrace Commission and the Whitney Biennial, the museum’s landmark exhibition of contemporary American art, presented every two years.
Hyundai Terrace Commission is an annual, site-specific project on the Whitney Museum’s fifth-floor outdoor gallery. The commission offers an expansive platform for artists to experiment at scale and to engage the museum’s terrace as an interface between art, the built environment, and the surrounding city.
This year’s Biennial, the 82nd edition of the exhibition series, offers a vivid, atmospheric survey of fifty-six artists, duos, and collectives shaped by a moment of profound transition. The work on view examines varied forms of relationality, from interspecies and familial kinships to geopolitical entanglements, technological affinities, shared mythologies, and the infrastructures that support and constrain contemporary life. Rather than offering a definitive answer to life today, the exhibition foregrounds mood and texture, inviting visitors into environments that evoke tension, tenderness, humor, and unease, while proposing imaginative, unruly, and unexpected forms of coexistence.
*Whitney Biennial 2026 is co-organized by Whitney Museum curators Marcela Guerrero, DeMartini Family Curator, and Drew Sawyer, Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography, with Beatriz Cifuentes, Biennial Curatorial Assistant, and Carina Martinez, Rubio Butterfield Family Fellow.
**Accompanied images are approved only for publication in conjunction with the promotion of the Whitney Biennial 2026 and the Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi. Each image must not be cropped, bled off the page, colorized, solarized, overlaid with other elements (e.g., tone, text, another image, etc.), or otherwise altered, except in terms of overall size. Reproductions must include the full caption information adjacent to the image. Use of images for front covers may incur a fee and will require prior authorization from the owner and copyright holder of the work. Please contact the Whitney Press Office for such use at pressoffice@whitney.org.
Image Credit
- Image 1-3: Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi, 2026. Photo: Timothy Schenck.
- Image 4-5: Installation view of the Whitney Biennial 2026 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 8–August 23, 2026). Photo: Steven Probert.
Daehyun Shin
daehyun.shin@hyundai.com
Global PR Team 1 · Hyundai Motor Company
Disclaimer: Hyundai Motor Group believes the information contained herein to be accurate at the time of release. However, the company may upload new or updated information if required and assumes that it is not liable for the accuracy of any information interpreted and used by the reader.
About Kelly Akashi
Kelly Akashi (b. 1983, Los Angeles) is a sculptor whose practice examines impermanence, temporality, and the material traces of human experience. Executed with rigorous conceptual intent and a deep reverence for process, her work spans glass, bronze, stone, and cast materials, and often uses the hand as a recurring motif. Akashi’s sculptures, which range from glass-blown flowers and towering weeds to cast hands, bodies, and extinct shells, offer a poetic yet unsentimental reflection on mortality and transience. She holds a BFA from Otis College of Art & Design and an MFA from the University of Southern California, studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, and recently completed an artist residency at Pilchuck Glass School in 2025.
About Hyundai Motor’s Art Projects
For over a decade, Hyundai Motor Company has deepened its partnerships with global museums and cultural organizations, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), Tate, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Most recently, Hyundai Motor announced Hyundai Translocal Series, a new partnership initiative that roots itself in fostering dialogues and exchanges among art institutions in Korea and across the globe. Hyundai Motor’s own art-initiatives include open call programs such as the VH AWARD, the Hyundai Blue Prize+, and Artlab Editorial, a digital platform dedicated to art writing by transnational voices. These ongoing collaborations embrace the complexities of the cultural landscape by exploring new ideas and perspectives within and beyond the art ecosystem.
For further information visit artlab.hyundai.com or follow @hyundai.artlab #HyundaiArtlab.
About Hyundai Motor Company
Established in 1967, Hyundai Motor Company is present in over 200 countries with more than 120,000 employees dedicated to tackling real-world mobility challenges around the globe. Based on the brand vision ‘Progress for Humanity,’ Hyundai Motor is accelerating its transformation into a Smart Mobility Solution Provider. The company invests in advanced technologies such as robotics and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) to bring about revolutionary mobility solutions while pursuing open innovation to introduce future mobility services. In pursuit of a sustainable future for the world, Hyundai will continue its efforts to introduce zero-emission vehicles with industry-leading hydrogen fuel cell and EV technologies.
More information about Hyundai Motor and its products can be found at:
https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/en/ or Newsroom: Media Hub by Hyundai
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