Kimsooja (born 1957 in Daegu, South Korea) extensively explores fabric, both literally and from a socio-political perspective, focusing on its materiality, investigating traditions and origins, as well as their implications. Throughout her research, she has been confronted with the concepts of borders, the self and the other, breathing in and out, location and dislocation. Expanding her reach beyond the canvas, she quietly attempts to re-weave the social fabric through a meticulous and determined approach, comparing herself to a needle sewing new patterns of being in the world. Trying to reach the essential by non-doing and non-making – often using immaterial approaches – she questions our perception and proposes new ways to define a collective memory of time and space.
The Heaven and the Earth, 1984, used clothing fragments, thread, acrylics, Chinese ink on canvas. Collection of the artist.
The Mother Earth, 1990 - 1991, used clothing fragments, acrylics, Chinese ink on canvas cloth, bamboo poles, copper line. Collection of the artist.
Deductive Object, 1990, used clothing fragments, copper line, Chines ink. Collection of the artist
“I started my practice as a way to solve conflicts generated by emotion and logic. Artists are always struggling with a blank surface, continually searching for a concept that relates to their identities. I give a lot of thought to the concept, how I approach my work, which is not easy. In the early 1980s, I used various materials – paper, wood and acrylic panels – to create geometric shapes in my installation and silk-screen works, but I could not find my identity in these works. I was always troubled by the fact that I couldn’t express myself fully. One day as I was sewing a quilt with my mother, I felt that my long search for a way to express fully thought and emotion in my work might have reached its conclusion. I noticed that the horizontal warp and weft of the fabric and the vertical in-and-out movement of the threaded needle solved my questions about the surface. The horizontal and vertical repetitions aligned with the human body’s basic movement of walking, looking, and speaking.”
- KimsoojaBOTTARI
Since 1992, Kimsooja has worked with the bottari concept in various site-specific contexts. That year, during her residency at P.S.1 (today MoMA PS1), she rediscovered the bottari – traditional Korean bedcovers which have been tied up into bundles that carry household goods when travelling or moving.
Kimsooja, 'Deductive Object', MoMA PS1 Open Studios, 1992. Installation views courtesy of MoMA PS1 and Kimsooja Studio
“The bottari has always been around us. The bottari was in my studio even before I worked on it. I just did not notice it. Then, when I happened to turn my face accidentally in the PS1 studio, the bottari was there. I myself did not notice the patches of cloth wrapped in a bottari that I had intended to use for cloth work. That bottari was a totally new one. It was surely a sculpture and a painting”
- KimsoojaThis was the turning point of her oeuvre, putting the cloth together – wrapping as a way of sewing – she transforms the flat surface into a three-dimensional painting, a sculpture and at the same time an object, made out of one not simple knot.
Artist with Bottari at Yangdong Village, Korea, 1994. Courtesy of Kimsooja Studio
“I create work from the painter’s point of view. If I cannot do that, I cannot find any articular meaning in using cloth.”
- KimsoojaKimsooja, 'Bottari', 2000. Installation views at the 5th Biennale de Lyon, photo by Pierre Laborde, courtesy of Kimsooja Studio
The bottari echoes the life of the artist, who has been living as a nomad since she was a child. It also reveals the universal tension between dislocation and the desire to maintain a familiar connexion. The act of filling and closing the bottaris plays an important role.
Kimsooja, Bottari, 2001. Installation at Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany.
“Bottari is the least belonging for a human being when we have an urgency and emergency. It is the memory of our own body and also life; and it has a temporal component in it as a past and as a present and a future.”
- KimsoojaKimsooja, 'Bottari: The Island', 2011, Used Japanese clothes, used Korean bedcovers, Dimensions variable, Site specific 8 Bottari installation at Palazzo Fortuni, Venice, Installation view from TRA-Edge of Becoming, Palazzo Fortuni, Venice.
The gesture of folding and packing the clothes, stacking and arranging other clothing with them, artfully bundling and knotting the whole, it is adding something immaterial: thoughts, feelings, and memories, both painful and beautiful, fleeting and formative.
“Bottari is not just an aesthetic or formal object, but something made from the reality of our life”
- KimsoojaKimsooja, 'Bottari', 2016, site-specific installation consisting of Used bedcovers, clothing, and objects from Guatemala, installation at 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz, Guatemala, Courtesy of Fundación Paiz and Kimsooja Studio
Wherever Kimsooja finds herself to be, her body is simultaneously her studio and her home. Her works, the borders between her body – as the space where new ideas arise – and the works themselves become increasingly blurred. She reacts in a site-specific manner and in response to the personal and social conditions she finds in her environment.
Documenta 14, 2017. For the installation at Fridericianum in Kassel, Kimsooja modified her existing 'Bottari' with the addition of used clothing from Kassel together with existing used clothing from Athens. Kimsooja placed the Bottari in three different locations throughout the exhibition in response to historical and formalistic context, current social/political issues, as well as the physical space of the exhibition. Kimsooja, Bottari, 2005. Collection National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens [EMST], installation view, ANTIDORON. The EMST Collection, Fridericianum, Kassel, photo by Jasper Kettner
“I’ve been intentionally using abandoned Korean bedcovers that were made for newly married couples, covered with symbols and embroideries and mostly wrapping used clothing inside – these have significant meanings and questions of life. In other words, my bottari contains husks of our bodies, wrapped with a fabric that is the place of birth, love, dreaming, suffering, and death – a framing of life.”
- KimsoojaKimsooja, Bottari, 2017. Installation view at Kimsooja - Geometry of Breath at Kewenig Gallery, 2017, Photo by Stefan Müller
In commemoration of Michael O. Kewenig, the Bottari is comprised of his clothes and personal belongings, 2017.
The Korean bundles are usually made with traditional, coloured patterns, but in 2017 Kimsooja challenges the design of these bundles by using plain black and white. The absence of colour transcends the usual bundle; it revokes the life, dreams, suffering and absence of those who wore these clothes.
Kimsooja, 'A Laundry Woman', 2000, site specific installation consisting of 27 Korean Bedcovers, 5 bottaris, and 6 fans, installation view at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, Liechtenstein, 2017. Photo by Aaron Wax, Collection of the Musee d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France, Courtesy of Musee d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France and Kimsooja Studio
“Bottari is an abstraction of a person, an abstraction of society and history, and that of time and memory. It is past, present, and future.”
- KimsoojaKimsooja, 'A Laundry Woman', 2000, site specific installation consisting of 27 Korean Bedcovers, 5 bottaris, and 6 fans, installation view at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, Liechtenstein, Photo by Aaron Wax, Collection of the Musee d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France, Courtesy of Musee d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France and Kimsooja Studio
The concept of the bottari gradually evolved and has infused her entire oeuvre. A continuation is Bottari 1999–2019 from 2019. The shipping container is filled with the artist’s personal belongings from her house in New York, where she lived for twenty years. Painted in the bright colours of the traditional Korean Obangsaek spectrum –white, black, yellow, blue and red – it references not only Kimsooja’s life as a nomadic artist, but also the freedom of mobility and choosing one’s home. The colours of the Obangsaek symbolise five cardinal points (north, east, south, west and a centre), as well as five natural elements (wood, fire, earth, metal and water), which the artist has explored in her series of video works Earth–Water–Fire–Air (2009–2010).
Kimsooja, 'Botttari 1999 – 2019', 'Traversées'. Installation view at Cathédrale Saint Pierre. Courtesy of the City of Poitiers and Kimsooja Studio, 2019. Photo by Sebastien Laval.
“When I ask myself, what in the world did I sew and wrap over twenty years, I can say now it was the scars, pain, longing, love, passion, torn parts of my psychology and body as well as my loneliness which needed to be attached. My sympathy towards others is nothing but self-love I find”
- KimsoojaKimsooja, 'Botttari 1999 – 2019', 'Traversées'. Installation view at Cathédrale Saint Pierre. Courtesy of the City of Poitiers and Kimsooja Studio, 2019. Photo by Sebastien Laval.
META-PAINTING
For this site specific-project at Wanås Konst in 2020, Kimsooja goes back to the origins of her earlier work as a painter. The installation of seven canvases and seven bottaris shows the product of the textile process.
The installation is made of raw linen originating from the 'Sowing into Painting' planting project in the fields surrounding Wanås Konst. Kimsooja experiments and explores agriculture by cultivating flax, encapsulating the entire cycle of material production to transform it into a painting that could last centuries.
Kimsooja,'Sowing into Painting, 2020'. Part of the exhibition Kimsooja: Sowing into Painting, Wanas Konst 2020. Photo by Mattias Givell
Kimsooja,'Sowing into Painting, 2020'. Part of the exhibition Kimsooja: Sowing into Painting, Wanas Konst 2020. Photo by Mattias Givell
The bottaris connect the materiality and questions on the structure of the fabric in its natural state, referring to the treatment of the painting as an object itself. Kimsooja thus relates these bottaris directly to the stretched Meta-Painting – from the flat frame to the three-dimensional painting – directing the focus on what remains invisible, that which is materially wrapped and immaterially hidden.
Kimsooja, Meta-Painting, 2020, Wanås Konst. Photo Mattias Givell. Courtesy of Kimsooja Studio
“These plants, which are grown and cultivated in a period of several months, will be transformed into paintings that could last for centuries. As well as a physical source of materials for painting, the field becomes a fluid tableau, covering the ground, in a pattern akin to a weaving in the earth.”
- KimsoojaMeta-Painting should be understood in a similar way to relationships based on a metalanguage. It is about painting that is not executed. It is about painting that addresses painting without the need for paint. It is not-doing that, very much in the spirit of John Cage, nevertheless produces a result that can be perceived and in the process acquires a particular spiritual depth. Kimsooja leads the visitors to the point of departure of a journey whose destination is nothing less than gaining insight into our existence and the world in which we live.
A comprehensive catalogue about the project Sowing into Painting at Wanås Konst will be published soon. You can pre-order your copy here.
“Making art is similar to studying philosophy. The process of thinking something through is more important than leaving something behind. This process teaches me unexpected things. For example, I could not have come to the bottari concept without the initial sewing experience. We start with a dot and over time the dot accumulates to create a line. All of a sudden, it becomes a cosmic element. Life is an accumulation of dots and experiences.”
- KimsoojaInstallation view: Kimsooja, Meta-Painting, KEWENIG Palma, 2022. Photo by Bruno Daureo