Kimsooja is an internationally acclaimed Korean born (1957 - ) multi-media artist who lives and works in New York, Paris, and Seoul. Her work combines performance, video and installation, to address issues of the displaced self. She brings together a conceptual and structural investigation of performance through immobility that inverts the notion of the artist as the predominant actor through an exploration of materiality/immateriality, mobility/immobility, and by non-making and non-doing. With the eyes of a mirror and the focus of a needle, Kimsooja investigates the conditions of humanity while simultaneously engaging issues of aesthetics, culture, politics, and the major challenges we face in our time.
Kimsooja’s work has been exhibited internationally including solo exhibitions at P.S.1 / MOMA; a site-specific project for the Crystal Palace of Reina Sophia; a traveling solo show at Contemporary Art Museum of Lyon, Museum Kunst Palast Dusseldorf, and PAC Milan; The National Museum Athens; Hirshhorn Museum; Miami Art Museum; Perm Contemporary Art Museum, Russia; Kunsthale 44 Møn; a joint solo show at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa & La Fenice in Venice; Baltic Center; BOZAR Brussels; Kunsthalle Bern; Kunsthalle Vienna; the National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea for the Earth-Water-Fire-Air site-specific project at the Yong Gwang Nuclear Power Plant; Daegu Art Museum; Atelier Hermes Seoul; Shiseido Gallery Tokyo; Plateau (Rodin Gallery) Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul; ICC, Tokyo; and CCA Kitakyushu.
Most Recently, Kimsooja represented Korean at the 55th Biennale di Venezia, 2013, and her first retrospective exhibition ‘Kimsooja Unfolding’ is currently on view at Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada.
