DAVID kim
David Kim is a German 3D artist working across sculpture, AI, and digital fabrication. His practice examines the militarization of the human body through AI-driven biological interventions. Combining scientific precision with speculative critique, Kim explores how design, biotechnology, and warfare intersect in shaping the posthuman anatomy. His work responds to a world where conflict no longer happens only on battlefields but inside bodies, infrastructures, and data systems.
ARTIST STATEMENT
“I build bodies as arsenals. Ribs become barricades, lungs become gas, bone turns into armor. By merging organic anatomy with AI-driven design, I question whether the human body remains human once it has been drafted into warfare. My sculptures are not fantasies — they are reflections of the future that military biotech is already designing.”
Anatomy of Defense
Anatomy of Defense
Anatomy of Defense
Anatomy of Defense
Anatomy of Defense Anatomy of Defense Anatomy of Defense Anatomy of Defense
Anatomy of Defense (2024–)
Anatomy of Defense presents a 3D-printed ribcage mutated into a protective shield for vital organs. The work imagines the body not as a site of healing but as a site of militarization, where biology itself is redesigned as armor. By blending anatomical form with weaponized function, Kim highlights the growing entanglement of AI, biotechnology, and the defense industry.
Part of a larger project exploring “bio-weaponized design,” the piece draws on real-world research in synthetic biology, tissue engineering, and prosthetic augmentation — technologies already adapted by the military for combat and defense. Anatomy of Defense pushes this logic to its limit, revealing a body that no longer exists for care, only for survival in permanent conflict.
Anatomy of Defense (2024) — 3D-printed ribcage sculpture reimagined as a defensive structure for vital organs, blending organic anatomy with military design.
Artist’s sketch combining anatomical studies that informed the sculpture’s development.
David Kim stands behind his sculpture, reflecting on the human body’s transformation into a site of defense and control.
Anatomy of Defense (2024) — Installation view in gallery setting, the ribcage presented as a bio-technological artifact at the intersection of body and warfare.
5 questions
with David Kim
1. Why redesign anatomy as weaponry?
Because war already redesigns the body — through prosthetics, trauma, injury, and ideology. I am not inventing the militarized body; I’m exposing it. The human form has long been shaped by conflict, from exoskeletons for soldiers to body armor printed with bio-sensors. I’m just making visible what is already being engineered.
2. Why focus specifically on the ribcage?
The ribcage protects the heart and lungs — symbols of breath and life. By mutating it into armor, I turn protection into aggression. It becomes a metaphor for our current condition: every structure designed for safety can be converted into a weapon.
3. Does your work glorify war or critique it?
It’s a critique, but one that refuses comfort. My aim isn’t moral distance but confrontation. These forms seduce and repel at the same time — that’s their danger. The horror is not in the fantasy but in how plausible it feels within the logic of our time.
4. How does AI participate in your creative process?
AI generates structural mutations, proposes new ways for bone to grow, armor to fold, lungs to reinforce. It becomes a design partner that reflects the military’s own use of predictive algorithms and optimization models. AI here isn’t neutral; it mirrors our collective obsession with efficiency, dominance, and survival.
5. What comes after Anatomy of Defense?
I want to build a full “organ arsenal” — a series of speculative biological weapons inspired by human anatomy. A liver that filters toxins from chemical warfare, a heart that pumps adrenaline without emotion. The deeper question is: when survival itself becomes indistinguishable from war, what remains of humanity?