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Gala Porras-Kim

She // Her // Hers

Interdisciplinary Artist

Los Angeles, California

A person with long brown hair and a dark floral-patterned shirt poses in front of a brown background with a slight smile. Blurry green leaves in the foreground frame the image on the left.

Photo by Emman Montalvan.

“The subject of my work is often the institutional frameworks that define, legitimize, and preserve cultural heritage. Considering how historical material is represented and exhibited, I underscore history’s methodological and ideological tools to analyze and ultimately control narratives and access to knowledge.”

Gala Porras-Kim (b. 1984, Bogotá; lives and works in Los Angeles and London) has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver in 2024; Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; the Fowler Museum at UCLA; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla; and Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, in 2023; Gasworks, London; Amant Foundation, Brooklyn; and Kadist in 2022; and MOCA, Los Angeles in 2019 among others. 

Selected group exhibitions include MoMA, Korea Art Prize at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 12th Liverpool Biennial in 2023; 34th Bienal de São Paulo; 13th Gwangju Biennale in 2021; LACMA (2021, 2017); MCA Chicago (2021, 2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019, 2016); PinchukArtCentre, Kiev (2019); Whitney Museum of American Art (2019, 2017); Para Site, Hong Kong (2019); and Seoul Museum of Art (2017). 

Porras-Kim was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2019), the artist-in-residence at the Getty Research Institute (2020-22), and most recently a fellow at Museo delle Civiltà in Rome. Her works are part of public collections at MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art; Brooklyn Museum; MOCA, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum; LACMA; MCA Chicago; DePaul Art Museum; Dallas Museum of Art; Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; FRAC Pays de la Loire, France; and the Tate Modern.

Donor -This award was generously supported by David Horvitz and Francie Bishop Good.

This artist page was last updated on: 01.30.2025

Visual Art
A collage of two photos. The first is an installation photo featuring four large panels mounted on a wall, creating a largescale still life depicting many objects including photographs, vases, jewelry, and statues lined up neatly on shelves. The second photo is a close-up showing details of the painting: The photos depict Asian temples and gardens and other locations, arranged between ornate vases, carved statuettes, and other items.

530 National Treasures by Gala Porras-Kim, 2023. Colored pencil and flashe on paper, 4 panels, 71 ¾ × 118 ¾ inches each.

Photo by Yang Ian.

An abstract artwork of tan and grey spots spreading across an off-white cloth backdrop. The dots create random, organic patterns reminiscent of sand, the texture of coarse-grained rock, or the sky on a starry night.

Out of an instance of expiration comes a perennial showing by Gala Porras-Kim, 2022–ongoing. Propagated spores from the British Museum and potato dextrose agar on muslin. 68 × 118 inches.

Photo by Andy Keate.

Installation view of three wall-mounted panels and two small sculptures set on pedestals in front of them, all referencing La Mojarra Stella, a mesoamerican engraved artifact. The first panel is a realistic graphite drawing of La Mojarra Stella. Propped in front of it is a transparent film printed with colored markings matching the artifact itself, like a map key. The second panel is an abstract version of the artifact mounted on a dark background with holes as if parts have been cut out. The third drawing transcribes the glyphs carved on the stone. The second sculpture is a white circle with colorful markings on its surface.

La Mojarra Stella by Gala Porras-Kim, 2019. Installation view of the Whitney Biennial 2017. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Photograph by Ron Amstutz, courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art.