• Space, light and the body are the elements with which Kimsooja gives form to the world. The purity of the images might seem to situate the vision elsewhere, but this feat has to do with the physical dimension. In her Bottari(bundles made with bedspreads), what strikes us is the feeling of the light, perhaps due to the reflective quality of the silk, or that the bundles of cloth seem to float weightlessly—and light has no weight. The Bottari are also a metaphor for the body, because the bed is the place that witnesses the primary events of existence: birth, slumber, dreams, love, death. The knot that seals these sculptures increases their silence and evokes the inaudible sound of light, and also that particular tonality that is connected with exile, when the sudden memory of a light, once known and now lost, reappears.

• In the space-light-body interaction the figure of the artist seen in the video indicates the subjectivity of the creator, outlining the space between transcendence and embodied reality. A space that is not limited to the self-portrait, but in the recovery of everyday gestures, like sewing and housework (the Bottari), sheds light on the link that unites being and things. For thousands of years these things have been the symbolic belt zone of female identity, and the place where its exclusion was effected. This is where Kimsooja searches for being, toward “a play between place and quarter, i.e., between the gathering of things in the locality of their reciprocal belonging and the vast open expanse in which each thing simply rests in itself,” as Gianni Vattimo writes in the introduction to Martin Heidegger’s Art and Space[1].

• For Heidegger the place is defined by the possibility of arranging things, which are, in turn, themselves a place: therefore the locality is a grouping of places (and we cannot help but be reminded of the Bottari Compressed in a truck), while the quarter indicates the vast open expanse, or the condition that permits things to arise, to rest in themselves, to gather in their mutual “belonging” (here we make an immediate association with the videos entitled Bottari, that show whirling snow, the storm, the rising sun, the sea). Heidegger believes the space of art, understood as making space, exists within this exchange.

• The works of Kimsooja, besides creating a space, “make space” in the sense that they belong to the place in which they appear and, at the same time, they open the vision of an “open vastness.” When Heidegger talks about making space, leaving space, of creating a void so the “co-belonging” of place and quarter can happen, he is referring to sculpture.Kimsooja’s videos are also sculpture, because what emerges is the circularity of things that gather in on themselves to define the place and to open a quarter, while time incorporates the image, sharpening the three-dimensional aspect. The viewing proceeds in alternations of stillness and movement, indicating a full space-time whole, rather than a sequential notion of time.

• As Heidegger says: “The play of relationships of art and space should be thought about starting with the experience of place and quarter, not simply taking possession of space. Sculpture is not actually a confrontation with space. Sculpture would be the way places embody themselves, opening a quarter and caring for it in order to keep something free gathered around them, to grant a dwelling to all things, to permit man to dwell in the midst of things.”[2]

• I see this game of relations in all the videos of Kimsooja: they do not express possession of the space that takes form in her works, given the reciprocal belonging between her figure, the things she sets forth, and those that constitute the places in themselves (the views and events she presents); they do not, in fact, possess the spaces that host them, because their vastness does not occupy the places of the representation, but actually enhances the voids required so that both are able to “co-belong.” It is an emotion that is almost directly transmitted to the observer as well.When we see her standing still as a needle in a crowd (A Needle Woman, 1999–2001), what disturbs and engages us is the relationship between her body and the self-embodiment of a locality, including places of real edification and the emotional, social, rational sites generated by those who live in the urban environment.

• In the moment of their contact with the body of the artist, a new “locality”of being appears, not defined in an abstract way, but through the encounter of different bodies: those of the men crossing the streets of Delhi, Lagos, Tokyo, Mexico City, New York, London, Shanghai; those of the individual places in which Kimsooja has done the performance; the psychic bodies that still exist in the male/female opposition. The needle, in the person of Kimsooja, becomes the boundary necessary to perceive a void in which to make room for feminine identity. It is a needle in a haystack, hard to recognize, easy to lose, but in the very moment when the (albeit narrow) space takes the form of a lone woman, motionless, silent in the crowd, a vast space opens up.Thus Kimsooja’s needle passes from an internal image, underlining the symbolic activity of sewing the hems of experience, to a metaphor of the earth's axis, joining the hemispheres and permitting rotation. The fact that all this becomes visible in a sculpture that, in spite of its lack of volume as a video projection, presents volume par excellence—namely the human figure—brings us back to the relationship between transcendence and embodied reality, which is the field of art’s actuation, but also of the mystery that links the permanence of life to death.

• The projection of the color spectrum in To Breathe / Respirare(2005) incorporates the space of Teatro La Fenice, but allows it to breathe independently, giving form to the inherent void of art’s spacemaking. The video is projected on the firewall during the hour before the beginning of Richard Wagner’s The Valkyrie, as the audience prepares to listen. The theater, not yet transfigured by the performance, is in a state of emptiness: seating, stage, balconies, furnishings define it as the“place” that is about to open to the “quarter” that will take form in the music, the singing, dancing and acting.

• This is where Kimsooja intervenes with To Breathe / Respirare. It is the union—created for Teatro La Fenice—of two videos: Invisible Mirror and Invisible Needle. The color spectrum invades the diaphragm that separates the hall from the stage, a void. The colors slowly shift from one to the next and become a mirror in which the theater itself is reflected.Then they proceed in a convulsive manner, like the invisible, repetitive penetration of a needle. An an iconic vision hovers, breath-like, circumscribing the space. The space cannot be possessed. It is possible to be part of this rib cage in which everyone feels sheltered and enclosed. The result is an immaterial sculpture in which, as Heidegger said, “the self-embodiment of places” is in direct relation to the quarter that “grants a dwelling to all things.”

• Kimsooja’s colors do not arrange themselves as an image added to existing images, but as a place capable of containing the theater itself, sheltering its authenticity. The breath she has translated into vision intertwines with the sound of the orchestra tuning up in that hour-long void of performance. It is not a set, a backdrop, but it creates conditions so that different expressions can flow together and draw light from one another.

• Nevertheless there is a hidden link in the construction Kimsooja has designed. It can be seen on January 27, a day without a performance of The Valkyrie, when the theater will be open to the public only for the screening. No players will be tuning up in the orchestra pit, so there will be another void. The spectators will not be waiting for an event; the event will be the theater itself. That evening To Breathe / Respirare will be accompanied by the “sound sculpture” The Weaving Factory 5.1 (2004).The sound is produced by the gradually accelerating breathing of the artist, which interweaves in synchrony with the images and spreads out into the space like an impalpable bubble. The sensation is exactly that of the “self-embodiment” that prevents possession of the space.

• An equally impalpable architecture of walls, arches, floors and windows rises inside and around the theater, while the color spectrum is reflected in the lights that mark the orders of the balconies, at times igniting a spotlight. The action of breathing, inside the image and the sound, redefines the space of the theater.

• If we think about the human body we know how to recognize breathing, but plants, water and earth also breathe, though inaudibly. Kimsooja, when she uses her rib cage to create a volume of air, triggers our perception of being contained in a space. Who has never felt a sense of expansion when something has been reached? Doesn’t that expansion of the mind and the heart correspond to a great breath?

• The verb “to breathe,” which unifies the three works shown at La Fenice And those in the exhibition at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, evokes the gesture of shaping a volume with air, light and color. It may seem like a poetic metaphor, but it actually corresponds to the activities of life that not only produce tangible objects, but also multiple airy sculptures such as thoughts, sentiments, fears, anxieties, joys. Their consistency crowds our existence, including those who are not able to process them in the circumscribed spaces of art, poetry and intellectual endeavor.

• In this project for La Fenice, Kimsooja makes a passage with respect to her previous works: to an increasing extent, the visible loses its perspectival limits, moving toward an expansion that is not resolved in abstraction, but in the self-embodiment of art as it grasps the dimension of openness that rests within being and, as such, has no frames, no preset spaces, but is an eternal arrangement of things in response to the mobility of experience.

This has often been seen as the original quality of artistic invention. But every work, even the most rigidly concluded one, harbors change inside it; from time to time it takes on new meanings, in fact, depending on the existence of the observer. Kimsooja focuses her gaze inside the mobile matter of perception and translates it into works that set out to give form to the openness that lies within human existence and nature.

• Kimsooja accepts being part of and recording a passage, a boundary, a duration. In short, she is willing to become a needle, precise like that of a scale, but also slender, invisible.

• The fact that the word “needle” is found in many of her titles underscores the link between the visible and what determines it, though the latter is not in the foreground, including the manual activity that has had such an important role to play in defining the material culture of women. Sewing is an action that excludes: it must be stationary work, yet it cannot limit the perception of an inescapable opening. We can try to forget about it, but it pricks and stings anyway.

• In the exhibition at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Kimsooja presents several videos never shown elsewhere, representing the background for this new passage in her work. All of them put us face to face with the immobility of passing time: seemingly a paradox, but an actual reality. It’s hard to perceive the transient nature of time. Usually we need a separation, an element that modifies the habitual state. Kimsooja frames this apparently immobile mobility. She guides us through the effort of waiting, of letting ourselves be crossed by time and image.

• Deep Breathing (1998): The sky is empty, dense with humidity, foggy phantoms twist in eddies, two birds cross the sky along unpredictable routes. The breathing of the title is immersed in depth, but also light, like flying.

• Bottari – chasing the fog (2000): We’re in Mexico, at Real de Catorce. A Plain with low shrubs is covered by fog that is not particularly dense, but prevents us from seeing the sky. The camera moves horizontally, in short movements, as if it were “digging” through the fog, carving sculptures out of the soft material of the condensed water and air. The camera movements cut the image, hewing out evanescent volumes.

• Bottari – waiting for the sunrise (2000): A rocky, desert-like road, again inReal de Catorce. The dawn has already brought light, but in the background, amidst the pale pink clouds, one can sense that the sun hasn't yet risen, or at least that point on the horizon is not visible. The video lasts five minutes, a short span, yet very long if nothing is moving in the scene. The effort involves summoning the concentration required to see the vastness, not just to imagine it. Gradually the eyes take over from the mind, joining with time, accepting the invisible. At the end the clouds light up completely and we can make out a beacon moving in the distance, along the horizon. A car driving down a road? Perhaps. We understand that life is reawakening, that the sun has completely emerged. The video ends without warning, just as happens with the sun.The initial grazing light lasts a long time and then, suddenly, invades the sky above us.

• Bottari – throwing the globe (2000): Mexico, Real de Catorce. The earth is a magma thrown into the air, it rotates and drags with it the sky and the profile of a plain, frayed by golden lights. It is an unreal cosmic motion governed by the desire to throw us into a symbiotic circularity with nature, independent of the physical laws of gravity.

• Bottari – drawing the snow (2001): New York. There is no longer any distance between the observer and the sky in which snowflakes whirl, dense, thin, spread like leaves, creating eddies and pauses. It’s a kind of dripping, gorgeous, beyond human gesture.

• Bottari – Alfa Beach (2001): the relationship between earth and sky is inverted. Below, in place of the beach, we see the sky. Above, the sea.They are divided by a cutting line that makes a division with respect to the boundless vastness of the horizon. In this gravitational inversion, the eternal alternation of the waves loses its meaning of natural cohesion and creates disorientation. At the end the caption says: “The video was shot in Nigeria, at Alfa Beach, one of the many ports of the slave trade.”Perhaps this overturning indicates the unnatural reversal of freedom into slavery. In that moment, even the cosmic coordinates are disrupted.

• A Wind Woman (2001): Gusts of intense gray, alternating with patches of blue, cross the screen creating fluid paintings. For centuries women have been interpreted as a metaphor of nature. In ancient societies, before the birth of the Greek civilization, as the great anthropologist Marija Gimbutas has written, the feminine presence was worshipped and formed the focal point of a social development in which there was no war. Relationships were based on an egalitarian dynamic between men and women. This was not matriarchy, but recognition of the reproductive mystery of life.

• With this “wind woman,” Kimsooja shifts feminine symbolism away from the usual Mother Earth metaphor toward an energy, the wind, that buffets every living species. A relationship arises between the Needle Woman, standing still in the midst of a human current, and the Wind Woman, who flies in the air: both are places from which to access the vastness of coexistence and the biological structures that determine us.

• The sense we get of all the videos presented in Venice by Kimsooja has to do with a theme that frequently returns in the history of the art of the last century, namely the pursuit of an abstraction within which one rediscovers the original moment of vision and thought. Malevich said he wanted “to go beyond the despicable surface of real things” to “discover the silent worlds that live behind the light of the sun.” Kimsooja seems to take the opposite path, investigating the light that rests inside everyday things.

• In the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, the urge to break with figurative canons was in tune with the birth of modern physics. Today, computer technologies have created a direct contact between scientific discovery and its everyday appreciation. So the conceptual, abstract aspect is less urgent. Instead, there is a need, foreseen by Heidegger in1969, to delve into the dynamic between the space of art and that which concerns “the habitation of men, for a possible dwelling of the things that surround them and have to do with them.”[3]

• Here lies the question: what does habitation mean today? What are the things that surround us? The Internet has brought the entire planet within reach. The art scene has expanded and the forms it offers us create an iconographic interdependency, never previously feasible, just as there was never such a numerous presence of women artists. All this radically modified the concept of dwelling and the relationship with the things that surround men and women.

• Kimsooja is Korean, but she lives in New York: as she reports, it was very hard to be an artist in her country. The fact that many of the videos shown in Venice portray events in different parts of the world, and that her Bottari come from Korean wedding ceremonies, is indicative of a radical change in the relationship among the things that surround life. What appears is a transitory character of existence that doesn’t have to do only with the fact that today we live in a more nomadic way; it also regards the idea that nomadism is an ontological condition, even for those who always live in the same place.

• The absence of perspectival boundaries in the videos at Fondazione Bevilacqua and Teatro La Fenice evokes, on the one hand, the mobility of living; while, on the other, it moves away from the concept of abstraction toward a purified image of truth, which can be connected to the abandonment of her place of birth and to Buddhist culture.

• Nevertheless, the representation of a truth that does not claim to be the center of the world, but just one of the places that make up the world, is decisive. In this way Kimsooja creates a relationship of belonging with her own place of origin and those embraced by her works.

• It’s what happens to everyone: the effort lies in purifying the things that surround us, so others can interact. One must make space for the events of living and grasp the vastness they contain: for Kimsooja they are the consistency of color, of snow, of fog, of the landscape, of the metropolitan crowd.