Yaron Michael Hakim (b. 1980 Bogotá, Colombia) lives and works in Los Angeles. Working across media, Hakim’s practice reflects upon assimilation, living between cultures, and exoticization. Through detailed, surrealistic depictions of flora and fauna, his paintings on recycled sailcloth investigate translation and migrancy, offering new insights and approaches to understanding hybrid identities, in which the exotic is rendered personal and familiar. In these paintings, as well as in small sculptural works, Hakim reconsiders identity through the lens of speciation, disrupting the established boundaries of self and other, human and animal. 

Hakim’s artist book, Yaron Michael Hakim: Psittaciformes was published with Grand Central Art Center and X Artists’ Books in September 2023 and features a conversation with Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Senior Curator José Luis Blondet, among other texts.

Hakim received an MFA from the University of California (Irvine, CA) in 2013 and a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2002. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Sargent’s Daughters (Los Angeles, CA), California State University (Sacramento, CA), Grand Central Art Center (Santa Ana, CA), Herrnando’s Hideaway (Miami, FL), and LAXART (Los Angeles, CA). His work has been included in group exhibitions at Tanya Bonakdar (Los Angeles, CA), Praise Shadows (Boston, MA), California State University (San Francisco, CA), The Pit (Los Angeles, CA), among others. Hakim’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Magazine, Hyperallergic, Georgia Review, and the Miami New Times, among other publications. 

His work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA) and the Peréz Art Museum Miami (Miami, FL). He is represented by Sargent’s Daughters.