Kirsten Franks is a London based artist who dissects and reimagines contemporary reality by situating her creative practice between material and conceptual research. Integrating various unstable natural materials, such as kombucha cellulose, seaweed and moss, she encourages the work to emerge from contingency.
Nurturing a tangled relationship between contingency and agency allows the work to simultaneously inhabit and abstract existing ontologies. Themes of queer ecology and communal potentiality root the work in an exploration between care and violence in making. These conceptual questions underscore her largely sculptural practice, although she has also worked across dance, photography, moving image and painting.
Kirsten has previously attended Paris College of Art and is currently an undergraduate at the Slade School of Fine Art.
Shows and Projects
Carpe Diem, Safehouse, November 2025
Chimera In A Vat, SitnaltA, Hypha Studios, Sugar House Island, July 2025
Toast To The Void, Enzyme Collective, Plant Room, June 2025
Nebulous, Qloud Collective, Purist Gallery, April 2025
SitnaltA, The Handbag Factory, March 2025
Ongoing Going On, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation Holborn, March 2025
A Pocket Full Of Plenty, Hypha Studios, January 2025
The Entranced Essence, RuptureXIBIT, May 2024
Primordial Soup, The Clapton Table, April 2023 (solo show organised and curated by Kirsten Franks and Anouk Lassalle)
Once Upon A Cube, Scirocco Dance Theatre, Trinity Laben Conservatoire
Press
https://fadmagazine.com/2025/01/07/4-exhibitions-opening-at-hypha-gallery-spaces-this-week/
https://www.paris.edu/communication-design-student-ariel-ronayne-interviewed-former-foundation-student-kirsten-franks/
https://www.paris.edu/creative-practices-during-lockdown-bfa-photography-student-kirsten-franks/
Carpe Diem, Safehouse, November 2025
Chimera In A Vat, SitnaltA, Hypha Studios, Sugar House Island, July 2025
Toast To The Void, Enzyme Collective, Plant Room, June 2025
Nebulous, Qloud Collective, Purist Gallery, April 2025
SitnaltA, The Handbag Factory, March 2025
Ongoing Going On, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation Holborn, March 2025
A Pocket Full Of Plenty, Hypha Studios, January 2025
The Entranced Essence, RuptureXIBIT, May 2024
Primordial Soup, The Clapton Table, April 2023 (solo show organised and curated by Kirsten Franks and Anouk Lassalle)
Once Upon A Cube, Scirocco Dance Theatre, Trinity Laben Conservatoire
Press
https://fadmagazine.com/2025/01/07/4-exhibitions-opening-at-hypha-gallery-spaces-this-week/
https://www.paris.edu/communication-design-student-ariel-ronayne-interviewed-former-foundation-student-kirsten-franks/
https://www.paris.edu/creative-practices-during-lockdown-bfa-photography-student-kirsten-franks/