ART CITES: Amsterdam-Kimsooja
Kimsooja’s videos and installations blur the boundaries between aesthetics and transcendent experience through their use of repetitive actions, meditative practices, and serial forms. In many pieces, everyday actions—such as sewing or doing laundry—become two- and three-dimensional or performative activities. Central to her work is the “bottari,” a traditional Korean bed cover used to wrap and protect personal belongings, which Kimsooja transforms into a philosophical metaphor for structure and connection.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Oude Kerk Archive
As Amsterdam celebrates its 750th anniversary, artist Kimsooja’s work subtly embeds itself into the city’s deep-rooted history of migration, transformation, and resilience. Her solo exhibition “To Breathe – Mokum”, situated in the heart of the capital’s ancient harbour district, inhabits the Oude Kerk—the city’s oldest building and a historical anchor point for centuries of arrivals and departures. Long before Amsterdam blossomed into a 17th-century metropolis, the area surrounding the church was already home to diverse migrant communities. Sailors once dried their sails beneath the church’s beams and knelt to pray for safe passage. Migrants signed their marriage certificates here, grounding new lives in a city perpetually in flux. Even the rise of Europe’s oldest Chinatown—dating back to the 12th century—adds another layer to this rich and layered urban palimpsest. These histories echo through Kimsooja’s exhibition, resonating like a low hum beneath the surface of the church’s worn stones. The title “To Breathe – Mokum” draws on the Yiddish word “mokum,” meaning “place” or “safe haven”—a name given to Amsterdam by Jewish migrants who found refuge here. This notion of shelter and belonging courses through every aspect of the exhibition. At the heart of the installation are Kimsooja’s iconic bottari—vibrant, fabric-wrapped bundles inspired by traditional Korean wrapping cloths. Created especially for the Oude Kerk, this series is her most expansive to date. Scattered across the gravestone floor like silent witnesses, the bottari are filled with clothing donated by residents from across Amsterdam’s richly varied communities. Each bundle holds fragments of individual lives, stories, and migrations, stitched together into a collective portrait of the city. In this gesture, Kimsooja honors Amsterdam as a living archive of global influences—today home to more than 170 nationalities and a majority-minority population. Above, light plays a transformative role. More than 44,000 windowpanes in the church’s towering Gothic windows have been covered with a transparent diffraction film. This material—woven with microscopic vertical and horizontal lines—bends and refracts sunlight into a spectrum of rainbow colors. As the sun arcs across the sky, the filtered light moves through the church like a living presence. Vaulted ceilings, stone pillars, and worn gravestones are sequentially bathed in shifting hues, casting the ancient architecture in a new, dynamic light. It is a choreography of time, space, and perception—each moment offering a new way to see and to feel. This iridescent illumination subtly recalls the church’s Catholic origins, when stained-glass windows once filled the interior with kaleidoscopic light. In “To Breathe – Mokum, Kimsooja revives this spiritual atmosphere—not through religious imagery, but through a universal language of color, light, and reflection. Across her global practice, she employs these light-based interventions as symbolic threads, weaving together distant geographies and cultures into a shared visual language. Ultimately, “To Breathe – Mokum” is a meditation on migration, memory, and the spaces we inhabit. It invites us to consider what we carry with us, what we leave behind, and how places themselves absorb our stories. In Kimsooja’s hands, the Oude Kerk is no longer just a monument to the past—it becomes a luminous body, breathing in the present, and gently glowing with the lives of those who have passed through.
Photo: Kimsooja, To Breathe – Mokum, Exhibition view Oude Kerk Amsterdam, 2025, courtesy Kimsooja Studio and Oude Kerk
Info: Oude Kerk Amsterdam, Oudekerksplein 23, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Duration: 23/5-9/11/2025, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, Sun 13:00-17:30, https://oudekerk.nl/
