• In 1994, Kim Sooja's performance at Oksan Seowon in Gyeongju marked the beginning of a social sculpture. Traditionally, sculpture involves carving a form to create the artist's desired shape. However, another definition of sculpture encompasses the assembly of objects. Within this definition, Sewing Into Walking-Kyungju becomes the starting point for defining Kim Sooja's bundle work as a sculptural piece and a postmodernist work.

• Since time immemorial, the banks of valleys have been private yet communicative spaces for women. The artist's performance at Oksan Seowon's valley involves walking across a quilt, the result of generations of aesthetic tradition and transmission, while collecting individual patches laid on the stone floor. Through this process, the work demonstrates the creation of a bundle. Though it may seem like an intensely personal and mundane activity, it can be viewed as performance art that modernises the work resulting from the continuous transmission of generations.

• From grandmothers to mothers, and onto adult women forming new households, the starting point has always been the transmission and gifting of a colourful quilt. Traditionally, the quilt travels between the bride's and groom's homes during the exchange of clothes and gifts, accompanied by the wedding document. During this process, dowries come and go, usually consisting of silk, quilt linings, cotton, and money. As each household goes through this process to form a new home, quilts accumulate. Various blessings for a new beginning in forming a future home are engraved on the quilt with diverse colours and harmonies. The traditional Korean definition of fortune and wishes for blessings are carved into these patches in various ways.

• In Korean households, the quilt is not just a functional, fabric-made product but an object imbued with the care, thought, and aesthetic vision of both families in preparing for and forming a new home.

• Joseph Beuys defined sculpture as "Thought is sculpture. Rather than a sculptural piece derived from a single object or materialised through a process, the act of 'thinking' naturally has a much more passionate effect in this world."[1] The quilt, comprised of thoughts that create a social starting point, holds the stories and thoughts of each family member receiving the object.

• Kim Sooja chooses these quilts, laden with thoughts, memories, and aesthetic synthesis, as the objects for her social sculptures, and proceeds to bind the traces of generations and memories of time into a single bundle. She gathers these objects, which encapsulate the touch of grandmothers and mothers and serve as the starting point for forming households, and sometimes sews them together with needle and thread to create shapes, or ties them into a single bundle. This process itself is a performance that creates a social sculpture.

• Kim Sooja's works choose a different artistic direction than the monochrome movement of previous generations, which fell into the abstract world due to a lack of communication with authority, and the people's art of her contemporaries, which was collectively centred on themes of excessive self-assertion, shedding authority, and resistance to power. This direction is connected to postcolonial discourses and multicultural debates that began in the Western art world. This trend, triggered by the exhibition "Les Magiciens de la terre" held at the Pompidou Centre in 1989, was a time when more outsiders, namely, Eastern and African artists, were gradually given opportunities to participate in exhibitions in the Western contemporary art mainstream.

• In line with these changes, Kim Sooja's artistic activities transformed and took various forms, starting with a wall sculpture exhibition at MoMA PS1 in 1992-93. Her sophisticated yet Eastern contemporary art provided opportunities for interaction with numerous curators seeking contemporary challenges. Kim Sooja was in search of a new artistic starting point.

• "Sometimes, she connects the concept of 'sewing' with the concept of 'walking', turning it into an everyday life notion, and links the fabric that first wraps the skin in birth and death with the soul, protecting and embracing it from the outside world."[2]

• Kim Sooja's artistic creation ideology connects with other concepts at the end of the long Cold War, the onset of globalisation, and the increasing freedom of movement. As global diasporic movements and migrations increase, Kim Sooja's work is classified as nomadic, opening the door to further interpretations. Her soft-material objects, unlike the rigid, angular cases of the West traditionally associated with immigration, can seamlessly fill any space, and have evoked admiration for the Eastern aesthetic of diverse colours and patterns, even during moments of movement, amongst Westerners.

• The quotidian bundle is exhibited at the Venice Biennale, a hall of contemporary art, and later in churches where it encounters the divine and requires sanctity. The realm of the everyday encounters new spaces and expands the activity area of the work into the realm of the eternal.
  Harald Szeeman, the general director of the art section of the Venice Biennale in 1999 and 2001, defined Kim Sooja's creative process and her work's keywords as follows:

• "Through a mixture of weaving close to the present and at the same time far away, she challenges us to reflect on the most basic actions, namely the ephemerality of our existence, the celebration of the moment, change, migration, resettlement, adventure, suffering, and having to leave what is familiar. She skilfully adapts her memorious and narrative-rich fabric to the present situation, creating an area of beauty and influence."[3]

• Kim Sooja's work enjoys the status of nomadic works that can adapt and operate more openly in accordance with the requirements of a global environment. The nomadic life is one always prepared to leave. Kim Sooja's aesthetic and material heritage from her grandfather, who operated the first weaving factory in Daegu, and her father's frequent migrations as a military man who moved his station often, are reflected in her work.

• After 2000, Kim Sooja's work expands the definition of the artistic realm through new objects. In "To Breathe - A Mirror Woman," she focuses on the breath of light. The work held at the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid (2006) shifts its focus from the traditional bundle to light.

• The range of light visible to the human eye is the realm of visible light. This visible light is composed of various combinations of light, and when it reflects off water particles or translucent glass, its original colours are projected, making the wavelengths of light visible to the observer.

Kim Sooja reflects and distorts these breaths and waves of light through film in architectural spaces, creating a harmonious interplay of space and light on a mirror, allowing one to experience infinite spatial inclusion without distinction between above and below. One can witness the expansion of the artistic realm of images as representations of humans, architecture, and nature through the interplay of spaces created by human planning and the celestial light reflecting below the mirrored woman.

• This process offers a new direction for Kim Sooja, who sought healing through art while embracing compassion for humanity and vulnerability to violence, crossing visible boundaries. The focus of art, which was previously directed towards humans, is expanded to encompass the realm of the natural world and infinity.

• The numerous vertical and horizontal lines of the structure of specific film materials function as prisms for light. Light passes through this film, creating a rainbow effect. Through this process, Kim Sooja, who studied the structure of canvas, light, colour, and pigment, envisions a structure capable of expressing the essence of light and sound in an inner space. In a completely sealed and dark space, she creates a silent space with blocked noise and contrasts it with light to forge a new space. [4]

• If the conventional works of art moved towards a more open space in relation to objects and actions, and towards a goal-oriented purpose, in ‘Archive of Mind, 2016’, a confined and restricted space is created where a certain light shines from above to below, inviting the audience's participation on the table. The breaths exchanged between the participating audience members create invisible waves through numerous clay balls due to collisions and absorption, which are then transmitted to strangers seated at the round table. This visualises the process of light waves being transmitted to us through installation art and implies another meaning.

• Much like the body, water, which constitutes the majority of the human body, adjusts the balance of the internal world through blood pressure, cells, and blood flow under the influence of gravity, the direction of the brain, and hormone regulation. Similarly, the human mind is constantly determined by the intersectional encounters of the body, soul, and spiritual realm within the chambers of the mind.

• Two thousand years ago, Apostle Paul recognised that the state of the mind, body, and soul was not only connected to the present situation but also to the eternal world, and he left these words in a letter to the Thessalonian church:

• "May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

• The installation art structured in the inner mind visualises the continuous formation of human spirit, soul, and body connections in everyday relationships, creating waves, inner conflicts, and collisions, sometimes bleeding like wounded souls. It structures the minds of people who cannot cope with or recognise these conflicts. Furthermore, it encourages confrontation with the inner world and oneself through new structures, transcending the realm of everyday life.

• Kim Sooja has always been at the forefront of her time, expanding her artistic world in response to the needs of the era. As the real world becomes increasingly complex, and the direction of exchange and media leads to the loss of humanity, Kim Sooja's work focuses on creating her artistic realm in a direction that allows her to listen to the invisible inner voice.

• ‘Deductive Object, 2016’ reflects a large amorphous structure onto a mirror below, bringing together the realms of earth and sky, and leading the viewer's gaze from a previously complex inner space to an infinite abyss.

• While Anish Kapoor created abstract yet meditative sculptures that evoke tension and fear in the audience with the smoothness of a woman's nipple on the surface and an overwhelming size that dominates the space, or an unpredictable darkness, Kim Sooja presents works that harmoniously encounter the existing natural world rather than a one-sided and structured space. Her works do not overwhelm the human mind or create an atmosphere of discomfort. Instead, they create environments that allow for a gentle contemplation of the inner self, much like the smoothness of the object's surface.

• This aspect is connected to the direction of her future-oriented works involving architecture, space, nature, and objects, as well as the artist herself since the 2000s.

• In 2022 Frieze Seoul Artist talk, Kim Sooja expressed her views on the future of art, emphasising the importance of understanding humanity, creating art that truly communicates and moves the artist from deep within their heart, and moving away from rough and destructive artworks. She hopes that the direction of art will progress towards works that genuinely respect human dignity and contribute to human civilisation.

• Such an artistic view provides a new sanctuary and meditative space amidst the ongoing transformations, explorations of new objects, and the increasingly complex and aggressive contemporary art world. It prompts audiences to reconsider what true art is. This artistic realm may appear like a dreamy space created by sitting on a bundle truck, absorbing the breath of nature and the dew held overnight, projected in the light. Much like the mythological early works of the artist, which transformed everyday migration into something mysterious, her artistic world may even now be taking long strides towards creating another dreamy yet beautiful future.

• 10 September, 2022