KIMSOOJA Explores the Notion of Being Human | Brilliant Ideas Ep. 45

brilliant ideas powered by Hyundai Motor [Music] ideas sewing weaving wrapping the workers labor of women are the very heart of kimsooja art who hinari danke Schoen boomy doted on tiempo Aurelio go together yolk remains oh oh diamonds honey Ruben Eagle patron Hancock on banana so criminal has Victor oak mandro gon crunchy Anna Karenina parrot instead panini requesting a comida from sculptures to installations to video performances kimsooja explores the larger notions of what it means to be human she's a global artist driven by a profound belief in art and coexistence kimsooja is an extremely intelligent and thoughtful and very critical artist today she produces work that is extremely insightful and she really enlightens us and calls for a deeper consciousness in the world keeps each other person is extraordinarily beautiful and very human her work belongs to a universal condition of humanity art making for me is to understand myself and the world around me especially in this era of disruption and violence I often feel powerless but I still believe in art culture and spirit and truth in the world that is the oxygen of our life that enable us to be here and now although kimsooja owns studios in New York Paris and Seoul Cheers first and foremost our Nomad traveling is key to her work for me home is not the physical place but the status of mind I've been wandering around by myself working but whenever I go anywhere I always feel home and I find my body as my studio she really is a modern-day global nomad and that's what really reflects in her practice she's bridging different cultures and different ideas and opening up a lot of dialogue as well as understanding between different groups of people nomadic living had always been a part of kimsooja life from the day she was born her father served in the military a job that required the family to move from place to place even once living there Korea's Demilitarized Zone or the DMZ it was a very interesting way of living for us and always in a way on the edge and I think it was my basis of my awareness and appreciation in nature and also curiosity in all the things around me also living a lot near DMZ area made me very aware of the sense of danger and the conflict between myself and the other from childhood kimsooja knew she wanted to be an artist at 20 she took up painting a tonic University but soon found herself experimenting with other mediums saga come to you in Antigua click on my screen emotion guardian and eranin choco bharanam winter ooh hello Chicago Gianna tango Ghazni de ESO y compare an illusion Rohinton dense a cop cigar opposed onigiri so Ludo cotton moussaka Don jr. Tom Kubik worship Sammy on Oh dong goo Edie Eason and a Oman om k evil Porter panel G Ramirez Oh Miroku pursuing a caning so a Pagani Tonka meet up I had this exhilarating moment when I was trying to push the needle point into the fabric I was completely shocked as if my head is hit by a certain thunder that comes from the universe so that was the moment that this is it this is the methodology I would experiment to investigate to dig into the depth of the surface that experience of sowing is a really important visual technique for her she's managed to actually rationalize the needle as a tool where the needle actually breaks through the two-dimensional tableau [Music] Kim surges works literally broke free from the canvas from 1983 her art took on a more three-dimensional form straddling the realms of painting and sculpture but her artistic voice truly came to its own when she was invited to do a residency at New York's MoMA ps1 it was here that Kim Soo jars most enduring motif the battery made its first appearance the pod daddy in Korean actually means to wrap so typically in the past it's a type of traditional cloth material that is used to wrap different objects for when people are moving and for kimsooja the poor teddy actually has a personal connection and being in New York as a young artist she needed to find her own place in the art world she needed to find her own distinct language and it's something that ties her back to home for her exhibition kimsooja collected old clothes from anonymous donors and wrapped them with used cloths to make her Potteries kimchi a pathetic open-toed Aaron's ham today Tom Durkin attending go Gingka Krueger ricca-san and Heaney the Sandin Heinonen crew and hey man hey mo muto Thiago crew hiya handsome Darion cocoon John and Erin and guru Santiago in a ghost watch Oh her exhibition won her international acclaim but for kimsooja it was a personal breakthrough that would shape the future of her art more my ps1 residency was very important in my career because there was the moment I discovered both Ari has another possibility to expand my practice in a way pottery-making is also three-dimensional way of sewing but daddy has a certain kind of individual history and memory and presence of body in it my work deals a lot on conditions of humanities and also violence in this world and was a war or refugees that is all questioning the condition of humanity and existence coming up kimsooja moves into video and we see her take the art of pottery making to Architecture korean-born artists kimsooja and international renowned for her unique exploration of the domestic act of sewing formerly a painter her landmark installation at MoMA ps1 in 1992 placed her firmly in the field of sculpture and installation but her work would take another turn just a year later when she began experimenting in video and discovered that the act of filming also parallels the act of sewing and rapping which was so critical to her work I [Music] discover my body as a symbolic needle that weaves the big fabric of nature and also I discovered the frame of the video or video lens is another way of wrapping the nature or wrapping all activities so that's the moment that I started video work and not because I was interested in image making or storytelling but because of that fact of wrapping practice in an immaterial way her experimentations in film eventually culminated in her iconic needlewoman series as the metaphorical needle kimsooja filmed herself in 14 busy cities in the world from London to Lagos Havana to Mexico City Jerusalem to Rio de Janeiro still and facing forward as the masses of people passed her by her very first one was at the Shibuya crossing in Tokyo it was not easy for me to resist this people against me and I was very vulnerable standing still but I was trying to focusing and finding a center in my mind and I was able to create a certain space that I feel very comfortable and also very peaceful so at the end of the performance I was completely in peace and full of love looking at the ocean of the humanity in front of my eyes and was such an extraordinary moment and memorable experience for me that sense of affection and a sense of compassion towards the humanity was truly special for for my entire career eBay PO is a panel oh good tanto doctor a doctor she panel in Estonian panadeine Kim stasis ruga thaiyananthan md resum tiongwan teal tile intuition unary tip-top young man go go crew union king is a take aikido giving gay Japan alliance in Israel she is trying to represent elements of human condition what is to be a human being in different parts of the world today in a way her work talks about universal values it describes how in different places and through history we construct identities with objects and with gestures and that condition also goes beyond form and material very often with video kimsooja moved beyond the realm of the physical and soon enough she did the same with her installations instead of objects she would fill spaces with sounds of her breathing a practice that eventually resulted in her extraordinary installation at Madrid's Crystal Palace in 2006 Kim such as works are really about interlinking aesthetics and transcendent experiences and that's why she has moved into mediums that is much more experienced she laid the floor with mirrors and wrapped the entire building in diffraction film her first use of the material I considered the architectural form as another type of abode re when I sewed the space I was very taken by the beauty of the building as a already perfect installation and I thought this space doesn't need anything else to put in people go to art and they expecting to seeing something experiencing something tangible but Jim Suja actually invited the people something none existed something invisible so it's actually a more exciting moment because we can experience what we couldn't expect it it was really an awe-inspiring experience to be engulfed by that space but at the same time there was something extremely Zen and peaceful her practice is really able to intervene and and make an impact on the viewer in the way that it starts to make you look at yourself and understand your own self and thereby really understanding humanity and I believe that's how she ends up bridging different cultures and and being able to impact a global audience after the break kimsooja returns to seoul and gives us a tour of her latest exhibition is [Music] kimsooja won critical acclaim worldwide for her unique craft that puts women's work front and center but her interest in female labor has very little to do with feminism as some might think a lot of people do see her as maybe a feminist there is something undeniably very feminine about her practice but I wouldn't just pinpoint her as a woman artist because sometimes those types of categories can be quite limiting instead she's simply presenting women's work as how she sees it as an art form I wish to create a certain context in contemporary art that a woman's activity can be read as an art form so I I was very much focused on discovering all the women's activities such as doing laundry making batteries existing actions existing objects but rediscovering and recontextualizing of women's activities her approach is most apparent in her long-running film series thread roots kimsooja visited five countries from peru to india and documented traditional women's work in each of them thread roots was conceived in 2002 when I first saw the the lace-making performance on a street in Bruges I was very inspired by the structural and performative movement of the lace making that was immediately related to masculine way way of labor which is our architecture so from that moment I was dreaming to film that depicts the performative and structural element of weaving and textile culture around the world in each of the films kimsooja juxtaposed these activities against Bilt's or natural structures subtly capturing the parallels she sees between the handmade woven structures and the physical landscapes that contain these cultures this project is in a way of showing the way I see the way I gazed the word and I was so the I consider this as a visual poetry but also wearing anthropology in a way you don't need to be a feminist to allow your work to speak about values or about characteristics that been a part of the female identity DOMA feminism erro anuncio carrageenan barakatuh chooses agape creosote rune haciendo una Y dr. quinones oh oh yeah guillotine ago she toggle the proneural way to Alden and run gosh it'll Katharine her holistic humanistic approach is even reflected in her name about a decade ago she made it one word dropping all the spaces in between and all the associations that came with them I discovered one word named kimsooja is free from all gender identity religious or political or or marital status kimsooja is now back in Seoul for a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Arts spanning the entire first floor of the museum it's one of Kim's cigars largest exhibitions so far with works from very early in her career to a few new ones made especially for the exhibition it's an insightful look at her current interests and how her expression of female labor has developed since the early 80s [Music] the centerpiece of the exhibition is her first interactive installation a large 19 meter table where visitors are encouraged to mold balls from lumps of clay I considered this clay ball also as another for daddy when you touched a lump of clay in your hands your hand and your palm functions as a pottery or so wrapping cloth in the room kimsooja surrounds visitors with a sound performance of her gurgling and clay balls rolling everything has been designed for a meditative even spiritual experience in the beginning you feel very much the cold clay in your hand there is very tactile and physical and once you caress them and embrace them into a sphere focusing on that action there is a moment that your mind is in a way absent and this material almost becomes a void and you don't feel the materiality anymore I really wanted to have my audiences to feel the clay and to feel the materiality in their hands as a pottery making but at the same time to feel the transcendent moment in their mind and those moments of forever frozen in the finished clay balls thus the title archive of mind [Music] art-making for me is in a way to understand myself and the other and myself and the world around me especially in this era of disruption and violence I often feel powerless but I still believe in art culture and spirit and truth in the world that is the oxygen of our life that enable us to to to be here and now her art really opens up a new way of seeing the world in a totally unexpected perspective she's an enlightened artist who goes beyond commenting or highlighting problems and negativity that's out there in the world and says she focuses on on a consciousness and calling out for a peaceful and shared collective understanding of what it means to be human and to breathe and and share this world together as one humanity her art has a very strong heartfelt gesture and that I believe is what makes kimsooja really an international artist and a global a global human being living as an artist is like a breathing for me every single thing I see every single thing I experience as a human being is a question as an artist it evolves into an artistic question and it's an existential way of living for me so if it were not art I could have been also a religious person but I choose my way as an artist and as a questioner and the meaning that I gain from each project and a wellness I gain from it as a human being is the most important thing for me [Music] brilliant ideas powered by hyundai motor

Channel: Bloomberg Quicktake

Views: 71,392

Rating: 4.8785248 out of 5

Keywords: Bloomberg, south korea, kimsooja, art, women, biennale

Id: P3Dq9dNmE-I

Length: 24min 13sec (1453 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 17 2017