Spanning thirty years of a singularly unique artistic practice, KIMSOOJA Unfolding at the Vancouver Art Gallery traces an arc of emotional intelligence that bridges preoccupations with formalism, domesticity, and above all, a globalized identity. Her shift in 1983 from painting to sewing with scraps of fabric onto canvas set the foundation for a meld of existing patterns into new patterns, revealing lineages and conversations of invisible feminized labour. These themes would carry forward through her Deductive Objects series before transitioning into performance, video, and multimedia works that have continually explored form and rhythm between the body and the material.
Kim Sooja, Needle Woman,, 1999-2001
In 1989 Sooja began using ready-used objects such as ladders, spools, and sieves, intervening into their purpose and form by sewing, folding, spreading, tying, and repeating fabric through and over these domestic objects. Conceptualizing the material into an embodied memory of repetition and patterns, Sooja continues this line of inquiry into her moving image works. Placing herself as a faceless body in the forefront, most recognizably as the stoic back and braid in Needle Woman (1999 – 2001) along with Sewing in Walking (1994) and Cities on the Move (1997), Sooja places the human, specifically the female body, as the embodiment of silence and suppression, moving across and forward and never looking back. The highlight of the exhibition is Needle Woman, where the female body as an uncomfortable presence rather than a objectified spectacle, is no longer moving across the screen, but moving around the globe, standing silent and still in each frame as the rush of the interchangeable crowds in each city (Tokyo, New York City, London, Mexico City, Cairo, Delhi, Shanghai, and Lagos) flow past and around her. Staged as a series of eight synchronized projections with matching compositions, the only constant becomes the artist, the embodied subject/object who pierces the flow of a fluctuating and globalized movement of bodies and cultures.
Curated by Chief Curator/Associate Director Daina Augaitis, who has been working on this project for over a decade, this exhibition is surprisingly the first retrospective exhibition for the artist, who now divides her time between Paris and New York. While first making an international splash in the early nineties with her installation presentation and production of bottaris (colour bundles of Korean textiles traditionally used to transport domestic objects), Sooja currently works in multimedia and represented Korea in 2013's Venice Biennale with an installation that focused on your own heart beat. Going deep into the formal relationship between body and material, she has turned inward for contemplation and guidance.
Vancouver Art Gallery: http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_kimsooja.html
KIMSOOJA Unfolding runs until January 26.
Amy Fung is a writer and organizer who publishes nationally and internationally in journals, magazines, catalogues, and monographs in print and online. She is the Programs Manager at Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society and her ongoings can be found at POSTpacificPOST.com and on Twitter @anotheramyfung. She is Akimblog's Vancouver correspondent.
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Kim Sooja at the Vancouver Art Gallery
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