Excavated, 2026, Bio-based plastic, acrylic paint coating, crystal diamond, 12 x 13 x 5.5 in

About the Artist: Tae Dong Kim-James is a Korean-American artist whose sculptural and installation-based practice explores memory, identity, cultural inheritance, and speculative archaeology. Through materially inventive works, he reimagines historical icons and canonical forms as fragmented relics suspended between preservation and collapse. Central to his practice is the ongoing Homage Series, in which renowned artworks, including sculptures by Auguste Rodin, are transformed into reconstructed artifacts marked by seams, fractures, and visible repairs. Rather than celebrating permanence, Kim-James embraces vulnerability, reinvention, and the evolving nature of cultural memory.

Working with bio-based plastics, acrylic coatings, found objects, and personal materials, Kim-James creates layered surfaces that blur the boundaries between excavation, restoration, and fabrication. His sculptures often merge public history with intimate personal narratives, questioning how memory, diaspora, and identity become embedded within objects over time. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including presentations at the Katzen Arts Center, the Mora Museum, the Korean Cultural Center Washington, D.C., and the Incheon Open Port Museum. Based in New York and Washington, D.C., he continues to create works that investigate what survives through time and how collective histories are continually reconstructed.