Kim Dacres is a visual artist using found tires and rubber to create sculptures celebrating influential forces in her life such as family, community, musicians, athletes, and ideas. Dacres’ process involves collecting and disassembling tires, layering them around wooden armatures using screws, and treating them with spray paint. In her work, Dacres emphasizes the facial expressions and hair styles of each piece in order to capture some of their charisma and celebrate their Blackness while also considering who is entitled to space and deserving of honorifics and monuments.
She is attracted to discarded rubber because of the color, smell, and the material’s symbolism imbued with a wealth of experience paired with wear, tear, and sudden disregard. Through the process of layering the materials, the rubber’s journeying experience transforms into muscle, bone, skin, hair, and personal style. Her work considers the texture of experiences unique to Black People and women and the fragments of their experiences that shape a world view.

BIOGRAPHY

Kim Dacres (b. 1986, Bronx, New York; lives and works between Harlem and the Bronx, New York) has a MS.Ed from CUNY Lehman College in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (2010) and a BA from Williams College in, Political Science, Art Studio, and Africana Studies (2008).

Dacres’s work has been exhibited internationally, including the UTA Artist Space in Atlanta, GA; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX; The Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY; Zidoun‑Bossuyt, Luxembourg; Artspeak, Vancouver, British Columbia; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines; 12th Edition, Tilburg, Netherlands; Phillips, New York, NY and UTA Artist Space, Beverly Hills, CA.

Dacres’ sculptures are held in the collections of the AMOCA – Artistic Museum of Contemporary Art, Cardiff, Wales; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Bunker Art Space, Palm Beach, FL; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University; the International African American Museum, Charleston, SC; the North Dakota Museum of Art; the Leslie‑Lohman Museum, New York City; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.

Kim Dacres presented her last solo exhibition at Zidoun-Bossuyt Paris in September 2025. She is currently part of the group exhibition AMOCA Dialogues: New Voices from the Museum Collection at AMOCA – Artistic Museum of Contemporary Art, Cardiff, Wales.
In 2026, she will unveil a new permanent installation of bronze sculptures in partnership with ArtBridge and Settlement Housing Fund at the historic Harlem River Houses in New York City.