Alexandra Kim
Degree: MA (Ceramics & Glass)
University: Royal College of Art
Graduation Year: 2024
New Blood Art Commentary
Alexandra Kim’s practice explores the tension between tradition and subversion, creating ceramic works that balance the human-like and the abstract, awkward and graceful. Working primarily with clay, Kim employs hand-building techniques such as coiling to craft her sculptures. This method involves building up forms layer by layer with rolled coils of clay, which provides both structural stability and the freedom to create large-scale, organic shapes without the constraints of moulds or machinery. Her hands-on approach allows her to work intuitively, shaping each piece directly, imbuing her work with a physicality and presence that connects deeply to her themes.
Her sculptures draw viewers in with curvaceous edges and inviting openings, reminiscent of bodily forms, only to disorient them with unexpected asymmetry and unpredictability. This dynamic interplay reflects her broader exploration of femininity, womanhood, and societal expectations.
Kim’s work pays homage to, while also reimagining, the Korean stone fertility statues of Jeju Island, known as “dol hareubang.” By referencing these symbols of life and creation, her pieces articulate themes of fertility and rebirth while challenging traditional roles and constraints placed on women. Her sculptures evoke a sense of duality—comfort and unease, beauty and awkwardness—highlighting the complexity of the female experience.
Through her use of clay and the physical act of building, Kim’s art becomes a conversation between cultural heritage and contemporary identity, merging the personal and the universal. By embracing both the welcoming and the disruptive, her work invites viewers to engage with its tactile, sculptural presence and the deeper narratives it embodies.
Artist Statement
Alexandra Kim (b.1998) is a Korean American ceramicist from Newton, Massachusetts USA.
My process in ceramic sculpture is intuitive and organic, and my pieces are born from ideas and questions I find meaningful and mystifying. Such themes include my Korean American heritage, female labour, fertility, and rebirth. My most recent body of work aims to encapsulate the tension I feel between two ideals of womanhood: the traditional expectations from my Korean heritage versus the contemporary concepts imbued in my American upbringing. Through large-scale coil built sculpture, I explore the push and pull. One particular set of sculptures serves as both an homage and a subversion of the Korean stone fertility statues of Jeju Island, “dol hareubang” (stone grandfather); I created her own feminized versions titled "dol hareubang" (stone grandmother) in an articulation of femininity, womanhood, and expectation. Echoing the abstract amorphous space of this tension between two worlds, I aim to produce works that are both awkward and graceful, anthropomorphic and abstract. I hope to draw a viewer in with curvaceous edges and welcoming windows, then generate confusion with asymmetry and unpredictability.
Solo Exhibitions
(2022) Nothingness|Everythingness, Harvard Ceramics Studio Gallery, Allston Massachusetts, USA
(2021) Ieodosana, Harvard University Arts, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA
Group Exhibitions
(2024) Royal College of Art Graduate Exhibition, Royal College of Art, Battersea London, UK
(2024) And you would have to believe it, Copeland Gallery, Peckham London, UK
(2024) Murmurations (Preston Fitzgerald Arts Advisory), Avenue Studios, South Kensington London, UK
(2024) London Design Festival - "Boundless" (Mint gallery), Mint Gallery, Mayfair London, UK
(2020) Harvard Studio Arts Show, Harvard University Arts - Carpenter Center, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA
(2020) Harvard Student Art Show, Harvard University Smith Center Gallery, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA
(2019) Harvard Studio Arts Show, Harvard University Arts - Carpenter Center, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA
(2019) Harvard Student Art Show, Harvard University Smith Center Gallery, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA
(2018) James King Bonnar Show, Mosesian Arts, Newton, Massachusetts USA
(2018) Mosesian Art Show, Arsenal Center for the Arts, Allston Massachusetts, USA
(2017) Framework Emerging Artists Exhibition, Arsenal Center for the Arts, Allston Massachusetts, USA
Competitions, Prizes & Awards
(2019) Newton Art Association Scholarship (Recipient of $800 scholarship as 1st place winner for art submissions among college-bound high school students in Newton, MA USA)
(2020) Artistic Development Fellowship- Harvard Council on the Arts (selected as 1 of 15 fellows awarded a cash stipend by the Council on the arts to nurture the artistic development of promising students in the arts)
(2024) New Blood Art Emerging Art Nominee (1 of 100 Fine Art Graduates in the United Kingdom nominated for this prize)
(2025) Shortlisted for New Blood Art Emerging Art Prize (1 of 24 artists to be shortlisted)
(2022) Featured in the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA Boston) Contemporary Newsletter
