Kelly Akashi creates glass chimney as memorial to Los Angeles wildfire losses
California-based artist Kelly Akashi has created a glass chimney to recount her personal experience of loss after the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles for the 2026 Whitney Biennial exhibition.
Titled Monument (Altadena), and made from 821 handcast glass bricks, the recreated chimney piece evokes chimneys that remained visible on the charred landscape in the aftermath of the devastating wildfire in Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January 2025, which destroyed tens of thousands of structures.
It was placed on a terrace of the Whitney Museum in New York City's Meatpacking District for the institution's biennial survey.
Akashi, who lost her 1926 home and studio in the fire, has been a part of a local artistic cohort working to recover materials following the January 2025 fires.
The 6,550-pound (2,971-kilogram) piece was fabricated and assembled in her Hudson Valley studio to work in unison with a 538-piece replica of the home's former walkway.
She told Dezeen that each of the bricks installed can be viewed as pieces of a metaphorical puzzle that bring her closer to salvaging hope from the ruins of her lost home.
"The work is not a literal reconstruction, so using clay bricks didn't feel appropriate. Solid glass bricks allowed me to rebuild the chimney through a different material language, where weight and fragility coexist." Akashi said.
"In rebuilding each element, I was thinking about how memory is constructed through care and persistence. The form remains, but is transformed. Light passes through it, and the solidity we associate with a chimney is unsettled."
Akashi's work has long interrogated notions of time and memory, leveraging her knowledge of casting and glass blowing to produce art that comments on social and urban issues.
This time, she has applied her practice to the personal experience of losing her own home, and towards recovery.
In Los Angeles, the rebuilding process has been fraught and varied, an element Akashi emphasised in Monument (Altadena).
"The tension between its recognizable form and unusual materiality felt akin to the act of rebuilding in my neighborhood. While we will rebuild, it can never be the same," she added.
"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. Each brick carries the record of labor and material transformation; together, they compose a new body that holds the traces of its past," Akashi said.
Her sculpture at the Whitney Biennial is accompanied by a work called Inheritance (Distressed), a relief replica of her grandmother's Corten steel dolly, a family artefact also lost to the Eaton Fire.
Akashi is also a slated participant in the upcoming 61st Venice Biennale.
Earlier this year, Dezeen covered the delivery of prefabricated homes to the afflicted communities in Los Angeles.
Architect Shigeru Ban recently joined the recovery effort through his contribution of a community centre made from shipping containers after other architects raised concerns over the disjointed nature of the recovery.
The photography is by Timothy Schenck.
The 2026 Whitney Biennial is on view from 8 March to 13 August in New York City. For more exhibitions in architecture and design visit Dezeen Events Guide.
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