Artists

The artists supply ideas and sketches for a work of art. The companies provide production facilities and expertise. Together they create works of art to be exhibited at one of the exhibition venues associated with Socle du Monde.

Kimsooja

Kimsooja was born in Taegu in South Korea. Her primary mediums are video and installation art. Often her starting point is the role of women in society. She stages the roles of women and shows it to the audience seen through various different meditative states of mind. In her videos she uses herself as the protagonist and we experience the piece and the world she has created seen through the eyes of her.

 

Work for the Biennale

Kimsooja is presented at the Socle du Monde biennial as a “special project”. The artist describes the work as an “archaeological project that spans cultures”. As part of a large-scale video project she will work with the relationship between textile work (which is commonly considered feminine), architecture (which is commonly considered masculine), and landscape within various cultures on all continents. For the Socle du Monde exhibition she will visit Peru and an indigenous people living on an island in Lake Titicaca. The title of this year’s biennial, Between Cultures, makes the event a natural stopping point for Kimsooja’s boundary-crossing, multicultural project.

 

Artist statement

"Thread Routes is one of the chapters of my first film project shot in super 16mm film which I conceived since I've been inspired by traditional lace making and its perfomative elements that I saw in Bruge, Belgium in 2002. By depicting the nature of textile culture that includes weaving, knitting, lace making, sewing and spinning, I consider my approach to this film as a 'visual poem' and a 'visual anthropology' trying to juxtapose and to represent the structural similarities in performative elements in textile culture as to the structure of the nature, architecture, agriculture and gender relationships in different culture and geography.

 

This is an on going project that has wide spectrum of my visual experiences and perception of the world that have been particularly represented in european lace making culture and its architectures focusing to few european cities, weaving and garment culture of Miao minority in Sichuan in China, textile and clay architecture of Raj! akstan area in india, clay architectures and weaving culture in Mali, including middle eastern cities, as well as Indian American weaving cultures and American nature.

 

While making this nondescriptive and unnarrative documentary film searching for the traces of threads through my gaze, I realize the Thread Routes series as a parallel performances of needle work I've done since early 80's and its evolution of the series into 'A Needle Woman' performances (1999 on-) which took places around the world and as an encyclopedia of A Needle and A Thread."

 

- Oct 20, 2010, Kimsooja -

 

Thread Routes < Peru >
2010
Duration: 29:31
Sound
16 mm film transfered to HD format
copyright: Kimsooja 2010
Courtesy of Kimsooja Studio
 

 

Cooperation

Special project

 

Info

 

Born:

1957, Taegu, Korea.
Lives and works in New York

 

Nationality: Korean

 

Education:

1984 Painting Dept. of Hong-IK University Graduate School, Seoul
 

www.kimsooja.com

 

Exhibitions

Selected exhibitions: 
2007 “Mumbai: A Laundry Field”, Kewenig Gallery, Cologne


2006 “To Breathe – A mirror woman (Respirar - Una mujer espejo)”, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid


2005 “Journey into the World”, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens


2005 “Conditions of Anonymity”, The 59th Minute & performance at Time Square, New York


2005 “Bottari”, Cologne 2005, Kewenig Gallery, Cologne


2004 “A Needle Woman”, Out Video - 7 outdoor video screen projection, Yekaterinburg, Russia


2003 “Conditions of Humanity”, traveling solo show, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf,


2003 “Kim Sooja”, Zacheta National Gallery of Contemporary Art, Warsaw


2003 “Mandala: Zone of Zero”, The Project, New York


2003 “A Mirror Woman - The Ground of Nowhere”, Crossings 2003: Hawaii/Korea


2002 “A Laundry Woman”, Image Passage, Musee-Chateau, Annecy


2001 “A Needle Woman”, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/ MOMA, New York


2000 “A Needle Woman”, ICC, Tokyo


1997 “Deductive Object”, Akira Ikeda Gallery, Nagoya


1994 “Sewing into Walking”, Gallery Seomi, Seoul


1992 “Kim Soo-Ja”, Hankook Gallery, Seoul (The 11th Suknam Fine Art Awards show)


1991 “Kim Soo-Ja”, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea


1989 “Kim Soo-Ja”, On Gallery, Osaka, Japan