Outside My Insides and Inside My Outsides

Outside My Insides and Inside My Outsides

May 18 - June 14th, 2025  

Curated by Jesse Bandler Firestone

Artists: Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov, Simone Kesting, Kimin Kim, and Himeka Murai

New York, NY – In an era where the self is both under siege and a sanctuary, Outside My Insides and Inside My Outsides opens pathways for reimagining notions of perception, identity, and vulnerability. This exhibition brings together four artists— Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov, Simone Kesting, Kimin Kim, and Himeka Murai —whose works explore the porous boundaries between internal worlds and external forces. 

Through deeply personal yet universally resonant expressions, they examine how we construct and navigate selfhood. Amid ever-shifting paradoxes of visibility and concealment, transformation andresistance, fragmentation and coherence, each artist offers subtle clues and intersecting visions of what it means to inhabit a body, a history, a space—or the multiplicities within a singular identity. 

Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov’s interdisciplinary practice dismantles rigid notions of normality through genetic bioengineering, philology, and visual art. In an ongoing series, Ilya turns to the language of masks—textured, stitched, and layered objects that obscure yet reveal, protect yet expose. Constructed from fabric and lace, these masks evoke a fragile yet resilient second skin, echoing the mutable nature of identity and perception. They serve as metaphors for both armor and vulnerability, questioning how the self is adorned, concealed, and transformed over time and through external influence. 

Simone Kesting’s series fragile structures evoke a dreamlike, psychological space where isolation and embodiment converge. Through delicate yet haunting imagery drawn on cold-glazed ceramic tiles, Kesting depicts figures in ambiguous, almost ephemeral states—hovering between presence and absence. Drawn from memory and personal experience as an inner archive, their work reflects both introspection and an invitation for viewers to locate themselves within it. The figures, undefined by gender or fixed identity, act as templates for interpretation—offering the possibility for imprinting, movement, and reflection. Their drawings, intuitive and elusive in content yet grounded in their stone-like materiality, conjure a sense of deep memory, reminiscent of ancient cave drawings or artifacts from another time. These figures exist in a liminal space—slipping away yet momentarily captured, naked and exposed yet simultaneously protected by a fragile veil of vulnerability beneath the surface. 

Kimin Kim’s practice navigates the intersection of historical memory, grief, and the symbolism of flora. Through paintings of spectral and supernatural flora and fauna, Kim interrogates the Korean concept of han—a deeply embedded cultural grief born of collective trauma. Flowers serve as liminal agents—situated between mourning and renewal, the personal and the collective—mirroring the tensions of postcolonial identity and memory’s shifting terrain. Beyond their symbolic function, flowers in Kim’s work become metaphorical objects, referencing 20th-century poetic anthologies, while painted stars pay homage to East Asian approaches to astronomy. Through these paintings, Kim recounts an endless search for transcendence, where relief is ephemeral and just beyond reach—like the bloom of a flower offering a fleeting moment of beauty or an astronomical flare guiding one through the vast unknown. 

Himeka Murai embraces the poetics of materiality, using found objects and natural inks to craft sculptural paintings and installations that embody the fragility and resilience of memory. By integrating old photographs, neighborhood imagery, domestic objects, and worn materials, she reveals the layered imprints of time, evoking both the personal weight of loss and the broader specters of forgotten histories. Her current work examines the tension between authenticity and erasure—juxtaposing photographs of empty lots where homes once stood in her hometown village in Japan with official identification documents and nostalgic family photographs. Navigating the slippage between bureaucratic narrativization and personal lived experience, Himeka’s work constructs a dialogue between erasure and preservation. 

Through these varied approaches, Outside My Insides and Inside My Outsides constructs a multi-dimensional portrait of the self—one that is porous, mutable, and in constant negotiation with itself and its surroundings. The exhibition invites viewers to consider how they navigate their own thresholds between interior and exterior, past and present, the self, the social landscape, and the environment. Now, when identity is both battleground and sanctuary, this exhibition offers a poignant reflection on what it means to be seen, to remain hidden, to exist in flux—and to continue the unfolding process of becoming. 

PUBLIC PROGRAM: Curator’s Tour Saturday, June 7, 2025 2-3PM RSVP to jesse@kunstraumllc.com 

Address:                KUNSTRAUM LLC, 20 Grand Avenue, Space #509, Brooklyn, NY 11205 

Hrs:                       Thu-Sat 12-6 PM by appointment only–please contact us first!

Contact: Jesse Bandler Firestone, jesse@kunstraumllc.com 

KUNSTRAUM LLC is a gallery, artist hub, and studio space located near the Brooklyn Navy 

Yard. Engaging artists, architects, curators, designers, filmmakers and writers, we are an 

interdisciplinary community that seeks to redefine the way creatives and curators collaborate. 

Image Credit: Kimin Kim