Kaari Upson

Kaari Upson (San Bernardino, 1972 – New York, 2021) was an American artist based in Los Angeles. Her practice encompassed drawing, painting, sculpture, and video. Deeply rooted in personal experience, her work explored physical and psychological trauma, the uncanny, domestic life, and the blurred boundaries between fiction and memory. Her solo exhibitions include: Kaari Upson , Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (2025); Kaari Upson: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection , Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023); Never Enough , Deste Foundation, Athens (2022); Clay Baby , Pièce Unique, Paris (2021); Go Back the Way You Came , Kunsthalle Basel (2019); Good Thing You Are Not Alone , New Museum, New York (2017); The Los Angeles Project , UCCA, Beijing (2014); One On One , SITE Santa Fe, California (2010); Hammer Projects , UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2007); The Larry Project, Chapter 2: The Honeymoon Period , D301 Gallery, California Institute of the Arts (2007). Her work was also included in numerous group exhibitions, including: Medardo Rosso. Inventing Modern Sculpture , Kunstmuseum Basel (2025); For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability , Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2024); She Said, She Said: Contemporary Artists from the Rubell Museum , Arlington Museum of Art (2024); Day for Night: New American Realism , Palazzo Barberini, Rome (2024); If not now, when? , Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (2024); Weight of Mind , Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College (2024); Transmissions: Selections from the Marciano Collection , Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles (2024); Hollow Earth: Art, Caves & The Subterranean Imaginary , The Lewis Glucksman Gallery (2023); Your Home Is Where You’re Happy , Haus Mödrath (2023); Chrysalis: The Butterfly Dream , Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2023); Inaugural Exhibition, Season One , Start Museum, Shanghai (2023); Venice Biennale, Venice (2022, 2019); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Full Moon , Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (2016); Sleepless: The Bed in History and Contemporary Art , 21er Haus, Vienna (2015); Second Chances , Aspen Art Museum (2015); Procession , CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain, Bordeaux (2014); Inner Journeys , Maison Particulière Art Centre, Brussels (2013); Test Pattern , Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2013); The Residue of Memory , Aspen Art Museum (2012); American Exuberance , Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2011); George Herms: Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown) , MOCA Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles (2011); Involuntary , Ford Project, New York (2011); Nine Lives , curated by Ali Subotnick, Hammer Museum, California (2009); Sack of Bones , curated by Ellen Langan and Blair Taylor, Peres Projects, Los Angeles (2008).