Laska, Kira Freije’s glossy black labrador, enthusiastically greets me at the door to the artist’s east London studio. Freije, make-up free, dressed in a vintage T-shirt and jeans, appears behind. “Sorry! I hope you like dogs?” Her manner is warm, self-effacing and light, a soft counterpoint to the metal bodies and limbs strewn around her: half-formed torsos, fragments of hands and feet, metal faces in contorted expressions, scraps of vintage fabric strewn on unfinished welded skeletons. One, stretched across an un-upholstered sofa, holds a large glass bird in its hand (Freije works closely with a glass-blower). Yet, despite this frankly quite strange scene, the space doesn’t feel macabre, rather oddly inviting, tender, domestic even.
Born in 1985 in London, Freije first studied at The Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, before attending London’s Royal Academy. “I suppose everything began there,” she says while offering me fresh papaya and sweet pastries. “At Ruskin, I had this incredible grounding in art history, but it overwhelmed me – it wasn’t surprising or exciting me. At the Academy, I finally had time to fail and come back up again. That’s when I started to find this voice.”
Since graduating in 2016, that voice has led her to exhibit her metal sculptures across Europe and beyond. Unspeak the Chorus, her biggest show to date, opens at The Hepworth Wakefield next week. It’s a title she lifted from a 2023 work centred around two ghoulish metal figures. “It just felt so pertinent. We’re living in such devastating times,” she says, though she doesn’t necessarily consider her work political. “I hope it’s human.” Still, her depictions are rarely “whole”. “The hands and feet are always my own,” she explains. “The faces belong to people important to me: my mum, my partner, my childhood best friend.” There is a quietness to these works, their gazes averted, their bodies poised somewhere between presence and absence. “It’s never really about their face,” she says. “What matters is the urge that made me want them there. And a possibility of embodiment – that you, as the viewer, might find yourself within it.”
Her works are known for incorporating fabric: cloth she might have, antique linens, a rag found on a dog walk. “They carry history, time,” she reflects, Laska now calm at her feet, “but the sculptures themselves have to hold the space.” At The Hepworth they certainly will, occupying a setting aided by Matt Daw, the lauded lighting designer known for his work with Wes Anderson. Freije’s hope is that the show stirs unexpected emotions, “Because, ultimately, I want people to feel that sculptures can offer that possibility.”
Kira Freije: Unspeak the Chorus is at The Hepworth Wakefield from 22 November to 4 May 2026
Cover look: Kira Freije in her east London studio, which houses various works in progress. Denim jeans, JW Anderson. Shirt, boots, and jewellery, Kira’s own. Sittings editor: Charlotte Rutter. Hair: Lauraine Bailey. Make-up: Emma Broom.