Biography
Kim Abeles is an artist whose artworks explore biography, geography, feminism, and the environment. Her work speaks to society, science literacy, and civic engagement, creating projects with science and natural history museums, health departments, air pollution control agencies, National Park Service, and community organizations.
In 1987, she innovated a method to create images from the smog in the air, and Smog Collectors brought her work to international attention. Projects funded by National Endowment for the Arts involved a residency at the Institute of Forest Genetics where she focused on Resilience; and Valises for Camp Ground: Arts, Corrections, and Fire Management in the Santa Monica Mountains in collaboration with Camp 13, a group of female prison inmates who fight wildfires.
Permanent outdoor works include Walk a Mile in My Shoes, based on the shoes of the Civil Rights marchers and local activists; and, Citizen Seeds, six sculptures along the Park to Playa Trail.
She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, California Community Foundation and Pollack-Krasner Foundation. Her work is in public collections including MOCA, LACMA, California African American Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Abeles’ journals, artists books and process documents are archived at the Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art. She is Professor Emerita at California State University Northridge.
Link to Abeles complete CV
Links to a selection of articles
New Indian Express article by Praeen S A (2/11/26)
AMA article by Philllip Barcio (8/20/25)
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by Frauke Steffens (1/16/25)
Art of Interference podcast hosted by Tori Hoover and Emma Reimers at Vanderbilt University (7/6/24)
Hyperallergic article by David Rubin (11/18/23)
The Atlantic Magazine article by Morgan Ome (11/2022)
New York Times article by Jori Finkel (12/10/2021)
Artillery article by Jennie E Park (11/28/2017)
Evan Kleiman's interview with Kim Abeles on KCRW's Good Food (10/28/2017)
Abeles presentation at Getty Museum's Art & Language Arts program (2012)
Link to a more detailed description of project and images of all ten valises
The Valises are in the permanent collection of Los Angeles Arts & Culture. You can request to borrow them for exhibitions and events.
Americans for the Arts honored the project that embedded Abeles in Los Angeles County Fire Department's Malibu Conservation Camp 13. You can link to the award information here.
Valises for Camp Ground: Arts, Corrections, and Fire Management in the Santa Monica Mountains Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and led by The Armory Center for the Arts
The ten sculptural and instructional valises were created for use by the National Park Service and the Los Angeles County Fire Department to teach about fire prevention, national forests, and our relationship as part of nature. Each valise has a theme with specific talking points, and all of them circle back toward teaching issues about fire abatement and our connection to wilderness. These are taken to community groups, events, schools, and venues as teaching tools for discussion about causes and prevention.
The female inmates at Camp 13 who have been trained as firefighters supplied the content for the valises through their experiences with firefighting and fire abatement. The process was organic in the sense that there was a two-way conversation between Kim Abeles as artist-in-residence and the inmates for the development of the valises. Along with the talking points, the firefighters also responded to the artistic, content-driven outcomes. Participants worked alongside as well as with the artist on the elements of the valises. In this way, learning a variety of sculptural skills was an aspect for the workshops, and important to the process, the women also taught each other while sharing skills.
“Prisoners in Los Angeles put out fires for a few dollars a day” by Frauke Steffens Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jan 16, 2025)
"This Artist Enlisted Female Inmate Firefighters for a Show about Our Fragile Environment." by Liz Ohanesian, Los Angeles Magazine
SOLO EXHIBITIONS IN 2021-2025
Kim Abeles: Community Smog; Curated by Museum Director Lynn Boland at Gregory Allicar Museum of Art (GAMA), Fort Collins, Colorado ; Partnership with Gregory Allicar Museum of Art at Colorado State University | Center for Environmental Justice at CSU | Colorado State University Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering | CSU College of Liberal Arts; Funded in part by Arts in Society; January 22-March 14, 2025
Kim Abeles: Body, Machine, and Industry at Glendale Community College Art Gallery; Curated by Dana Marterella; Included three connected sections: Smog Collectors, On Photography (inspired by Susan Sontag), and The Retina Journal. September 24 -November 22, 2024
Kim Abeles: Social Furniture 1978-2023, Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery, California State University Los Angeles; Curated by Gallery Director Mika Cho. September 14 - October 30, 2023
Kim Abeles: Smog Collectors, 1987-2020, Curated by Jennifer Frias, Nicholas and Lee Begovich Gallery, California State University Fullerton; September 18 -December 18, 2021. Link to press release
The survey then traveled to Sacramento State in an edition curated by Art Galleries and Collections Curator Kelly Lindner.
Kim Abeles: Smog Collectors, 1987-2020, Library Gallery, California State University Sacramento; January 31 - May 20, 2023; Link to photos of the exhibit
The book, Kim Abeles: Smog Collectors, 1987-2020 is available at amazon.com and bookshop.org.
Kim Abeles - A Survey, Curated by Michele Ellis Pracy, Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, CA; July 30, 2022 through January 8, 2023. The exhibit and catalogue are made possible by the Council of 100 who selected Kim Abeles for the Distinguished Woman Artist Award.
Location: Park to Playa Trail in Los Angeles
Public Art commissioned by LA County Department of Arts and Culture in coordination with the County’s Second District, neighborhood groups, and both County and State Park Services.
Sky Leaves (2022) is presented on two locations and with two related narratives. The leaves that you see here on the North Tower depict the oldest living trees currently found on earth, and each leaf shows the sky from the place where the tree is located.
The second site on Charlotte Avenue narrates a journey through time and space beginning with the leaf Archaeopteris -- an extinct genus from 380 million years past -- that features the WMAP image of the universe.
Sky Leaves is an artwork started in 2015 through the City of San Gabriel's public art program, and is now installed on the mixed-Use building designed by LCRA Architecture and Planning. The building was officially named, Sky Leaf after the public art.
Nearly thirty years since the Presidential Commemorative Smog Plates in 1991, Abeles revisits her Smog Collectors to address the current state of our environmental crisis globally. The latest of the series depicts ten world leaders who presented speeches at world climate summits from 2011 to 2018. The quotes are written on the plates in the language originally presented. Stenciled plates collected smog in Moscow, Paris, Washington D.C., London, Ottawa, London, and Los Angeles.
World Leaders in Smog was created in collaboration with the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, for their exhibition, "The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100", curated by Snejana Krasteva and Ekaterina Lazareva. World Leaders in Smog will be on view at Expo Chicago. This special exhibition and panel discussion was sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
