ART CITIES:Seoul-Kimsooja
Kimsooja has approached women’s labor of sewing from a different angle and expanded it to a larger context of society. She refuses social categories that is defined by society and delivers a message of universality among population regardless of gender, culture, and appearance. She is one of internally active artist who has created her own style of interpreting and connection art and life.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Kimsooja selected by MMCA to be featured as the third artist for MMCA Hyundai Motor Series (a long-term project to globalize Korean art), her solo exhibition “Archive of Mind” is held at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (Seoul). Kimsooja is known for her “Bottari” series which explores the Korean identity. This exhibition presents for the first time to the public the major performative installation “Archive of Mind”, a new sculpture installation “Deductive Object”, the new and fifth chapter of Kimsooja’s ongoing film series “Thread Routes” and a series of recent works that mark an evolution in the artist’s practice. Divided into six chapters, “Thread Routes” takes place in six different cultural zones around the world. The artist considers her approach to this film as a “visual poem” and a “visual anthropology”, in that it juxtaposes and presents structural similarities in performative elements of textile culture with the structures in nature, architecture, agriculture and gender relationships in different cultures. Kimsooja considers the “Thread Routes” series as a parallel performance to the needlework she has done since the early 1980’s, and its evolution into the “A Needle Woman” performance series since 1999. This series took places from around the world as an encyclopedia of a needle and a thread. While “A Needle Woman” investigates the dimensions of the needle, Kimsooja contextualizes contemporary art through her multi-disciplinary practice through eyes of a needle and thread that weave humanity, nature and cosmology consistently and evolutionary throughout her more than thirty year career. “Thread Routes” traces the formal and psychological threads encompassing the textile structures to that of the body and the world, and human desire to culture. Chapter I, explores Peruvian weaving culture, and its tight alignment with its landscapes and historic archeological structures. Chapter II, focused on European lace making actions, these scenes are set against representative European architecture. Chapter III journeys to India and studies the traditions of dyeing, sewing, weaving, embroidery, tattoo and woodblock printing, juxtaposing them with the archeological structures and temporary housing structures of the nomadic communities in Gujara, as well as the Step Well and the Sun Temple in Amedabad. Kimsooja filmed Chapter IV in China, where she encountered the specific weaving, dyeing and garment culture of the Miao minority in the Guizhou, Hainan and Yunnan provinces. Chapter V explores Native American textile culture.
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, 30 Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Duration: 27/7/16-5/2/17, Days & Hours: Tue, Thu-Fri & Sun 10:00-18:00, Wed & Sat 10:00-21:00, www.mmca.go.kr
