Mallory Kimmel

Kimmel is a Washington-DC based artist, who makes conceptual furniture to address exclusionary design practices. She focuses on disrupting loopholes used to deny human rights. Placing the focus on object-centric forms of possession, exclusion, objectification, and consumption helps to unravel the exploitation of objects to address the same forms of abuse applied to people. Kimmel believes if you liberate objects, you liberate people. Kimmel looks to objects and people as co-facilitators to democratize comfort-based privilege. Shifting hierarchical presentations in space to communal-based comfort will reshape public institutions in both form and practice. The use of sculpture, performance, critical writing and gathering as practice are employed to subvert capitalism and promote rest and community development. Formally trained in the arts, Kimmel received her MFA in fine art from California College of the Arts and degrees in studio art and ecology from Susquehanna University. She teaches as an adjunct professor at the Corcoran School of Art and Design at George Washington University, George Mason University, Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) and Prince George’s Community College.

She manages the permanent art collection at CCBC; and co-founded the Black X Collective, a grassroots organization dedicated to supporting Black filmmakers and Black musicians. Kimmel’s work has been published by e-flux, Dirt, and The Curator’s Salon. Kimmel’s work, Quiet Companion was acquired by CCBC as a permanent outdoor sculpture. Kimmel is collaborating with The George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum with the Washingtoniana Collection called, America: Land of Civil War. Kimmel was selected as the Curatorial Fellow at Aggregate Space Gallery and completed artist residencies including the Social Studies Residency in Northern California and the Outreach Artist Residency in the Arctic Circle funded by the National Science Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aboard a scientific research icebreaker ship.