Kimsooja Receives Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize
By Camilla Alvarez-Chow
Portrait of KIMSOOJA. Photo by Malthe Ivarsson. Courtesy the Frederiksberg Museums and Kimsooja Studio.
The Secretariat of the Fukuoka Prize Committee announced Korean conceptual artist Kimsooja as the winner of the 34th Fukuoka Prize 2024 in the Arts and Culture category.
Awarded by the Japanese city and the Fukuoka City International Foundation, the prize was created to celebrate individuals or organizations whose works preserves or showcases Asian cultures. Kimsooja was chosen by the eight-member Fukuoka Prize Jury for her artistic techniques, which led “to a grand view of the universe and universal truths” and make audiences “aware of the harmony and balance in the world” despite separation and conflict becoming ever more prevalent.
Born in Daegu in 1957, Kimsooja gained international acclaim after her artist residency at New York’s PS1 Contemporary Art Center in 1992. There, Kimsooja began to experiment with bottari, a traditional Korean cloth used to bundle up various important moments in one’s life. Using objects that typically allude to women’s labor such as sewing and wrapping, the artist weaves together the lives of humanity with concepts reminiscent of Zen Buddhism. Her practice extends to performance, sculpture, and installation, although she is widely known for her video performance work A Needle Woman (1999), in which she documents herself on city streets standing motionless. Kimsooja’s solo exhibition “Meta-Painting” is currently on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York and will run until June 14, 2024.
The award ceremony for the Fukuoka Prize will be held on September 26, 2024, and Kimsooja will give a public lecture on September 28.
Camilla Alvarez-Chow is an editorial assistant at ArtAsiaPacific.
