M HKA Ensembles

° 1957

Born in Daegu (KR), lives in New York (US).

Kimsooja

During the period 1980-84 Kimsooja studied painting at Seoul’s Hong-IK University. The following year she goes to Paris with a scholarship from the French Government, in order to study lithography at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (1984-85). Although at the beginning of her artistic course she is involved with painting for a while, she very quickly starts to search for new expressive means which will give her the possibility to overcome the boundaries of the two-dimensional painting surface and to ‘get involved’ with the object itself. Her artistic quests lead her towards sewing. Fabrics – second-hand clothes, traditional Korean textiles and especially bed covers – which she collects from friends and strangers, will dominate Kimsooja’s work in the following years.

In her first works with textiles she combines the technique of sewing with that of drawing and painting, while from the early Nineties, Kimsooja’s works begin to metamorphose into three-dimensional objects. During this period she creates her first bundle (bottari) from traditional Korean bed covers. In 1998 Kimsooja relocates to New York. From the mid-Nineties the artist expands her means of expression, adopting video - mainly as a means of recording and documenting performances in which she is the protagonist. It is worth noting that although it appears that in the last fifteen years, the hallmarks of her artistic style (textiles, the process of sewing, bottari), often seem to be missing, in reality they have excelled and now exist on a more conceptual level.

She has shown her works internationally, in important solo and group exhibitions (Sao Paulo Biennale, 1998, Kimsooja, Journey into the World, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, 2005, Venice Biennale, 1999, 2001, 2013, et al.).