Kimsooja
born 1957 in Daegu - South Korea
lives and works in New York - USA

Kimsooja is a South Korean multidisciplinary conceptual artist whose work combines performance, film, photography and site-specific installations with textiles, light and sound.

"One day in 1998, Kimsooja sews a traditional Korean bed sheet with her mother. Pulling the needle through the fabric, she suddenly feels as if she has been penetrated by an electric shock. "The energy of my body passed through the needle and seemed to connect with the energy of the world. It was then that I understood the power in sewing: the relationship of the needle to the fabric is like that of my body to the universe." This experience becomes a lasting key experience for Kimsooja's artistic work. In the process, the metaphor of the needle unfolds in multiple ways and undergoes a continuous transformation in her work. Initially, the needle is a tool that replaces the brush and can penetrate the painterly surface, the surface par excellence, of her tableaus. With the penetration of the surface she succeeds in entering the plane of space and time and at the same time in advancing to the other, unknown side. Embedded in this is also the concern to connect the gap between art and life, aesthetic experience and everyday life processes, which characterizes her entire oeuvre.

Christiane Meyer-Stoll, in: Kimsooja: Interviews. Catalog of the exhibition in Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2018, p.9