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.

Dacres was born in the Bronx to Jamaican immigrants. She has her MS from CUNY Lehman College in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (2010) and her BA from Williams College in Political Science, Art Studio, and Africana Studies (2008.) Dacres’ work has been exhibited around the world, including recent solo exhibitions at Charles Moffett Gallery in New York City (2023), Gavlak Gallery in Palm Beach, FL (2021) and Los Angeles (2020), as well as group exhibitions internationally and within the U.S., including Black American Portraits at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA (2023) and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2021), Sounds of Blackness at The Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines (2023), The Beth DeWoody Collection at The Bunker in Palm Beach, FL (2022), Godhead – Idols in Times of Crisis at Lustwarande 12th Edition, Tilburg, Netherlands (2022), Arrangements in Black at Phillips, New York, NY (2022), From a Place, Of a Place, presented by ArtNoir X regularnormal X Meatpacking District, New York, NY (2021), Through the Looking Glass, presented by UTA Artist Space, Beverly Hills, CA (2021). Dacres is the recipient of the Artadia New York Award Grant (2022). Her work is included in museum collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the South Carolina International African American Museum, and the Nasher Museum at Duke University. Kim Dacres lives and works between Harlem and the Bronx, New York.