KIIS Faculty Spotlight: Doreen Maloney
A longtime member of the KIIS community, Doreen Maloney has served as both a Program Director and a faculty member on KIIS Berlin, KIIS Berlin & Barcelona, KIIS Türkiye, KIIS Argentina, and KIIS Japan–Korea Pop.
This fall, she was one of 32 artists from around the world selected for the 2026 Geumgang Nature Art Biennale in Gongju, South Korea, where her work, The Dawn Is Always Possible, explores natural materials and their connections to Korean material culture.
Read about her work and inspiration in her own words below:
The Dawn is Always Possible is composed of suspended sculptural paper cloud forms dyed with persimmon tannin, royal logwood pigment, oak gall, and iron liquor, each with a rich history in Korean material culture. The forms range in tone from cool gray to warm amber to stark white.
Drawing inspiration from the dawn after a storm, the amber and purple-blacks evoke both the increasingly unsettled weather and the volatile global political climate, while suggesting the hope, calm, and promise of a new dawn. In this way, the work responded directly to the Biennale’s theme, Urban Nature Art: Let the Sunlight in through My Window.
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