In my art practice, I aim to provide the viewer with an immersive experience – not an easy thing to achieve with paintings on a wall. Other artists employ different methodologies to achieve this end, and one of them is the remarkable Kimsooja from Korea. She is an artist, nomad and humanist all rolled into one.
Her work is regarded as deeply insightful, intelligent and calls for a deeper consciousness in the world. “Art for me is a way of understanding myself and the world around me especially in this era of destruction and violence. I often feel powerless but I still believe in art, culture, spirit and truth in the world that is the oxygen in our lives.”
She has studios in New York, Paris and Seoul but is essentially a nomad. She describes her body as her studio and she always feels at home on her travels. A nomadic existence has been part of her life since she was born, her father worked in the military so they were constantly on the move – at one time living near the Demilitarization Zone in Korea.
She initially studied painting at art school but became dissatisfied with the flat canvas. Sometime later she was sewing quilts with her mother when she had a breakthrough moment. Inserting the needle into the fabric she realised how she could use the needle as a tool to break through the 2 dimensional tableau.
From 1983 onwards, Kimsooja’s art took on a more 3 dimensional structure straddling the realms of painting and sculpture. But her career really took off when she was invited to a residency at MOMA’s PS1 in 1991. It was here she produced work based around the bottari – a cloth to wrap personal effects that women would carry around with them. This was her way of finding her own identity in New York.
She puts the lives of others into her bottari works as the contents are clothes donated anonymously. The concept being that these lives coexist. She regards bottari as a 3 dimensional way of sewing.
In 1994 Kimsooja moved to video work culminating with her Needle Woman series where she filmed herself in 14 cities around the world. Here she uses her body as a needle to weave various cultures together and she had to go into a deep meditative state whilst crowds of people brushed past her.
She speaks of having feelings of peace and love whilst looking at the oceans of people in front of her, which suggests to me that she was able to enter a psychedelic state. She enjoyed a sense of affection and compassion towards these people which was very important for her entire career. She explores the human condition and universal values that often goes beyond form and material values.
Kimsooja’s more recent work involves installations and it is here that she moved to another dimension – filling spaces with the sounds of her breathing. In 2006 she installed “To Breathe – The Mirror Woman” at the Crystal Palace in Madrid. She wrapped the entire exterior of the building in diffraction film and covered the floor with mirrors. With this work, Kimsooja has moved from the physical to the transcendental. She saw the palace as a perfect installation, an architectural bottari and decided it didn’t need anything in it.
Her work can encourage moments of self reflection, a Zen like experience that gives her work a universal appeal.
To Breathe, The Centre Pompidou-Metz 2015
While Kimsooja’s work is undeniable feminine, it would be incorrect to describe it as feminist. Some critics argue the latter description is far too limiting in the context of her work.
One of her more recent works is an interactive piece called Archive of Mind which consists of a 19 metre table where people are encouraged to mould balls from lumps of clay. She considers the actions of working with the clay as a form of bottari where the actions of the hands are akin to wrapping. Whilst forming the balls, the participants hear sounds of Kimsooja gurgling and the balls rolling thus creating a meditative, even spiritual experience.
So why the title Archive Of Mind? Kimsooja wanted the participants to allow their minds to become absent and feel the transcendent moment which is permanently frozen in the finished clay balls.
Her art practice is seen as a strong heart felt gesture and this is what makes her an artist of international stature. Rather than comment on individual issues plaguing the world, Kimsooja seeks a peaceful, collective understanding of what it means to be human and to share this world as one humanity.
Zone Of Nowhere, Perth Festival, 2018
“Living as an artist is like breathing for me.”
Ref: Kimsooja Explores The Notion Of Being Human - Brilliant Ideas Ep. 45
