The constant mayhem created by eight billion people makes it difficult to find inner peace, and yet, for artist Kimsooja, the search for harmony becomes a quest to forge human connections. Through colorful traditional Korean textiles to rainbows spilled out from diffraction grating film, the artist shows us how the messiness of humanity can be contained within neat and vibrant bundles.

Born in Daegu in 1957, Kimsooja began her artistic training as a painter at Seoul’s Hongik University, where she received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She found, however, that taking up the brush proved to be limiting. A revelation came in 1983 when the artist was sewing quilts with her mother, and she discovered the potential held by needlework. Since then, Kimsooja has incorporated textiles in her artworks, bringing domestic women’s labor to the forefront of her artmaking.

Early in her career, Kimsooja began experimenting with bottari, a bundle of things wrapped up with traditional Korean cloth that served essential functions at important moments in one’s life. Along with the processes of sewing and wrapping, the artist draws on concepts from Zen Buddhism and other Asian belief systems to reflect on the collective human experience. Across her four-decade-long career, Kimsooja’s practice has extended to performance, sculpture, and installation—all in an attempt to show what binds humanity together.

Based in New York and Seoul, Kimsooja has presented her work in numerous international museums, galleries, art fairs, and public spaces. She represented Korea at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 with the exhibition “To Breathe: Bottari” and participated in the 48th, 49th, 51st, and 52nd editions of the international exhibition in Venice. Her works have been featured in numerous major biennales, from Gwangju (1995, 2000) and Busan (2002, 2014) to Sydney (1998), Istanbul (1997), and Lyon (2000). Solo exhibitions include presentations at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (2006), the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul (2016), and many long-term installations, including at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul (2021). Kimsooja is the recipient of many international accolades, including Ho-Am Prize given by Ho-Am Samsung Foundation in 2015, Hong Kong’s Asia Society Arts Award in 2017, South Korea’s The Order of Cultural Merit – Okgwan in 2021, and most recently, the 34th Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize in 2024, awarded by the Japanese city and the Fukuoka City International Foundation.

This year, Kimsooja showed at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York in “Kimsooja: Meta-Painting” as well as at the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection in Paris with her work To Breathe – Constellation (2024). She will also participate in an upcoming group show, “Light,” at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. Ahead of these and other forthcoming projects in 2024, here are six iconic artworks by Kimsooja.

Deductive Object series (1990–97)

Through the 20th century, the bottari was a textile ever-present for Koreans. From swaddling a newborn to wrapping an urn for the deceased, or embroidered with messages of love and good fortune to be gifted to newlyweds, these traditional bedcovers are the site of births and deaths, where the weary dream and lovers linger. To Kimsooja, the bottari perfectly encapsulates the breadth of human experience.

During Kimsooja’s artist residency at New York’s PS 1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS 1) in 1992–93, the artist fully realized her career-defining series, Deductive Object, which she had started a few years prior by incorporating found objects and textiles. Here, Kimsooja gathered old, donated clothes and cut them into pieces and piled on the floor in the center of the room. The artist also inserted bits of fabric into cracks and holes in the wall, in an act of “non-doing,” potentially symbolizing how the artist tries to heal societal and mental rifts with everyday memories.

Soon after her residency at PS 1, Kimsooja was invited to participate in “Trade Routes” (1993), a group exhibition at the New Museum in New York. That was where the bottari made its first appearance. The artist wrapped objects such as a judo mask, farm tools, and household objects to form oval-shaped bundles, which she stacked in twos or threes, to extend the sewing space from flat to three-dimensional space.

Cities on the Move – 2727 Kilometers Bottari Truck (1997)

Kimsooja’s childhood can be characterized by constant relocation. A career soldier, her father was stationed at numerous locations near the demilitarized zone with North Korea. For the traveling exhibition “Cities on the Move” (1997) co-curated by Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Kimsooja created the performance piece Cities on the Move – 2727 Kilometers Bottari Truck (1997).

The seven-and-a-half-minute video documents the artist seated atop a mound of filled bottari piled onto the back of a truck. The camera records her from behind, capturing her as she revisits several villages and cities of her youth during an 11-day trip across South Korea. Throughout the video, Kimsooja sits stoically and observes the landscapes passing her by, meditating on past memories and her peripatetic lifestyle then and now.

Kimsooja draws on the cultural associations of the bottari and the act of sewing, which is perceived as feminine in Korean culture; the expression “making a bundle” means a woman has left her family or home behind. The work represents the duality of reliving the past while also looking ahead amid changing landscapes. The artist reveals the complexities of our globalized world, where one’s cultural identity and the idea of home, whether we want it or not, are in constant flux.

A Needle Woman (1999–2001)

When Kimsooja visited Tokyo, she strolled in the famously busy Shibuya neighborhood. Overwhelmed by the sights and sounds, she paused. That epiphany led to one of her most iconic video-performance works, A Needle Woman (1999–2001). In this video, we see the artist from behind again as she stands still while the crowds walk past her. The performance alludes to Zen Buddhist practice, where one fortifies the mind against the frailty of the body’s attachments to fear, lust, anger, and ignorance that propels the illusion of the ego. While referencing the ideas of global citizenship and mass urbanization at the turn of the millennium, A Needle Woman also addresses the difficulty of going against the cacophonous tide of our modern-day existence.

After Tokyo, Kimsooja traveled to Shanghai, Mexico City, London, New Delhi, New York, Cairo, and Lagos and re-enacted the performance in each city. The footage then became the basis of an eight-channel video installation, each screen showing herself in one city in a six-minute loop. While the project had no apparent relationship to the concept of sewing, to Kimsooja, however, her body is realized as a needle that threads together the fabrics of nature, life, and cultures. Like a bottari, the city scenes are the fabric, “wrapping” the trajectories of every passerby the artist has encountered throughout the project.

To Breathe – A Mirror Woman (2006)

In the late 1990s, Kimsooja began experimenting with mirrors, as seen in her installation work Bottari Truck in Exile (1999), showcased at the 48th Venice Biennale. The artwork involves a truck loaded with many bottari facing a mirrored wall in the exhibition space. Seven years later, the artist combined reflective materials with light to create awe-inspiring installations.

To Breathe – A Mirror Woman was a site-specific work created for Madrid’s Crystal Palace, an art venue repurposed from a 19th-century conservatory. Covered with mirrors, the venue’s floors reflected the sky view through the palace’s glass rooftop. The windows were adorned with translucent diffraction film that reflected the space with rainbow light. The interior was also filled with the sound of Kimsooja’s recorded breathing, lulling visitors into a peaceful trance. Speaking with Art21 in 2013, the conceptual artist shared that she conceived the work “as a bottari of light and sound and reflection” where these intangible elements wrapped the space. In To Breathe, Kimsooja highlights how human nature, though elusive, leaves marks in the world around us.

The work has been recreated in many different venues across the world, recently including the Mairie de Saint-Ouen station's exchange hall in Paris (2023) and at Desert X AlUla 2024 in Saudi Arabia.

Thread Routes series (2010–19)

For most of her life, Kimsooja has adopted a nomadic mentality: “Home is not a physical place but a state of mind.” Travel has always been an important theme in her work as her artistic practice attempts to weave and intertwine humanity with the world.

Thread Routes (2010–19) is a series that Kimsooja described as an “epic poetry” and “visual anthropology.” Shot on 16mm, the six-part film documents the craft of Indigenous weavers and artisans around the world. The surrounding natural landscape and historical architecture reveal correlations between the gestures of traditional weaving techniques and its finished tapestries.

Each film takes place in a different geographical region and is organized into chapters. She first visits Peru, specifically the Sacred Valley around Cusco and Machu Picchu, while in Chapter III, Kimsooja juxtaposes India’s textile traditions with archeological structures such as the Sun Temple in Ahmedabad. Its fourth iteration saw Kimsooja document the garment culture particular to the Miao minority in China, while the sixth and final chapter in 2019 transports viewers to Morocco, showing women working in the wash house and the men tanning animal skins in Fez.

Archive of Mind (2016– )

In 2016, Kimsooja created her first interactive installation, titled Archive of Mind. People were invited to sit around a large circular or oval-shaped table (as wide as 19-meters in diameter in some installations, including at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, in Seoul). Using the table’s surface, audience members were invited to take a piece of clay (of any size) and roll into into a ball, experiencing a meditative journey in the process. The repetitive motion of cupping and rolling clay into a sphere beckons the mind to empty itself of distractions and focus on the present. When they are finished, they leave the ball on the table so that it eventually fills with the products of hundreds of hands and thousands of hours of simple labor. The material of the clay wraps into itself and, seen this way, becomes another expression of the bottari. The completed spheres are a testament to the individuality of their makers and the collective efforts of many.

The installation is also paired with Unfolding Sphere (2016– ), a subtle soundscape of Kimsooja gently gargling water and the rattling of clay balls being kneaded, rolled, and bumped into one another. Her body becomes the instrument, reminiscent of her To Breathe series and Needle Woman.

Kimsooja’s art delves into the philosophical and spiritual inclinations of humankind, as well as the materials that allow us to access these realms and practices. The artist’s extensive travels affirmed her belief that binding ourselves to each other requires less. Despite our impermanence, our awareness can still blossom into a profound compassion for humanity.

Camilla Alvarez-Chow is an editorial assistant at ArtAsiaPacific.  

Subscribe to ArtAsiaPacific’s free weekly newsletter with all the latest news, reviews, and perspectives, directly to your inbox each Monday.