Located in the Thomas I. Storrs Building on the UNC Charlotte campus, the Lambla Gallery showcases professional and student work relating to the curriculum in the School of Architecture and the creative endeavors of the College of Arts + Architecture. The gallery was named the Lambla Gallery on May 14, 2021, in honor of Ken Lambla, professor emeritus and founding dean of the College of Arts + Architecture.
Lambla Gallery is open Monday-Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. during the academic year. Visitor parking is available in the East Deck 1.
Fall 2026 Exhibitions
The Distance of the Moon
On view Aug. 10 – Oct. 7, Reception: Sept. 15, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
In early 2026, artist and educator Soo Kim traveled to northern India to visit Jantar Mantar, a collection of 18th-century geometric monuments which functioned as unique astronomical instruments. This observatory was constructed by Maharajah Sawaii Jai Singh II of Jaipur to predict the time and movements of the sun, moon and planets. Aiming for a clearer picture of the entire sky, the large-scale structures each possessed a specialized architectural function whose measurements could be seen by the naked eye.
Throughout her practice, Kim has photographed locations imbued with layers of histories, colonial pasts, utopic ideals, political conflicts. She systematically deploys intricate acts of removal and layering which render her pictures as wholly new compositions which are sculptural, nuanced and anomalous. There is a protraction that ensues, which yields a slowness in viewing the amalgam.
In (The Distance of the Moon), Kim has hand-cut absences and created disruptions in the masonry of the instruments which give way to glowing, celestial spheres that evoke the very systems being measured.
Born in South Korea, Soo Kim is based in Los Angeles. After earning a BA degree from the University of California, Riverside, she combined studies in Critical Writing, Art, and Film at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia for her MFA. She is currently the Professor and Program Director of Photography, and heads the Critic-in-Residence program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.
The College of Arts + Architecture presents the annual Global Studies Exhibition, featuring work from student travel to Rome and Venice, Italy; Taipei, Taiwan; Tohoku and Tokyo, Japan; and Wroclaw, Poland.
The College of Arts + Architecture offers a broad range of international study programs and boasts the highest study abroad rate of any college at UNC Charlotte.
Each year, the Global Studies exhibition provides us with very tangible evidence of the importance that study abroad and other international opportunities bring to the curriculum and the student experience. The work displayed in the gallery represents the perspective, exploration, interpretation, cultural learning, and investment in a different way of understanding that can only come from stepping out of one’s cultural and social norm and into a new environment.
As Ansel Adams is credited with saying, “In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.” And it is exactly the exploratory aspect of an international experience that makes this such an important piece of a creator’s development. These students have explored their creative medium(s), their host environments, their own understanding of the world around them, and, perhaps most importantly, how they understand themselves as a person who arrived abroad from their home culture but now sees home through a different and broader prism.
Brad Sekulich (Director, UNC Charlotte Office of Education Abroad)
