Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork

My practice is driven by a sensitivity to the acoustic experiences of our environment and how they construct or govern our behaviour and internal experience. Rooted in the act of listening—to our environment, to others, and to ourselves—my installations serve as a multi-faceted, expanded instrument comprising sculpture, speaker systems, microphones, the surrounding architecture, and the audience. These components come together to form a biosphere where the vernacular of visual art, archaeoacoustics, music, choreography, and textiles converge, allowing me to discern discrepant listening habits in hopes of fostering a more radical kind of empathy.

My projects attempt to comprehend the contradictions I experience every day as a fourth-generation mixed-race queer artist. Through my practice, I allow myself to drift between spaces, guided by my body and intuition. I share my work in hopes of cultivating more awareness in one’s personal listening habits and of the space(s) they occupy. I want the audience to find themselves in my work, participate actively, and lean into the unique situations my installations create. None of my pieces have set durations, listening "sweet spots," or recordings. They exist only in the time and place the audience spends experiencing them.

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork’s hybrid practice combines work in sound installation, sculpture, and performance with the aim of reconfiguring the traditional hierarchies between audience, performer, and architecture. Inspired by mundane acoustic products, Gork uses materials such as wool, hair, vinyl, and silicon to create objects and surfaces that absorb, block, or diffuse sound to support the functioning of the sound environment. In their practice, acoustic concepts such as absorption and reflection become inextricably intertwined with the psychological and somatic processes these terms suggest. Each sculpture and wall work is designed to serve the conceptual, aesthetic, and acoustic needs of the total environment.

Gork’s solo exhibition Poems of Electronic Air at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, MA (2024) marked the most expansive exploration of her practice to date, drawing upon her wide-ranging interests—some of which include the sonic histories of club culture and the concert hall, the protective qualities of clothing, and the resonances of our surrounding architecture. The presentation encompassed new iterations of past works, such as a sonic and visual landscape punctuated by a dense cluster of colored wool and fiberglass columns, river stones, and an interactive sound component. The exhibition also featured the newly commissioned, site-specific installation Variations in Mass 5-7, which allowed Gork to continue their exploration with kinetic sculptures. Often constructed as a reflection on the acoustic architecture of specific places, these sculptures conceal hierarchies between the mind, bodies, and the architecture of the spaces the body inhabits.

In 2024, Gork also created an installation for Intermissions, an ongoing series at The Renaissance Society, Chicago IL, in collaboration with performer, sound artist, and electronic musician Laetitia Sonami. Their other solo exhibitions include Like a Breath of Fresh Water, Visual Arts Center, The University of Texas at Austin (2023); Solutions to Common Noise Problems, François Ghebaly, New York, NY (2022); and Olistostrome, Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, China (2021). Group exhibitions featuring Gork’s work include Small World, 13th Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (2023); Searching the Sky for Rain, SculptureCenter, Long Island City, NY (2019); and Soundtracks, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2017).

She is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2023); the Art + Technology Lab Grant from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2021) and the Joan Mitchell MFA Award from the CUE Arts Foundation, New York, NY (2011). 

Gork holds an M.F.A. from Stanford University and B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute.