보따리 오브제와 바늘 여인으로 2000년대 전후 세계 미술무대에서 명성을 얻은 김수자(1957∼)는 어머니와 이불보를 만들며 바느질을 하고 있을 때, 온 우주적 에너지가 자신의 몸을 통과하여 바늘 끝에 모이는 느낌을 경험했다고 밝혀왔다. 손으로 직물을 짜고 만드는 행위는 전통적으로 여성들이 전담했고, 이는 예술(art)이 아닌 수공예(craft)로 분류되었다. 그러나 ‘쓰여진 것’이라는 의미의 ‘텍스트(text)’의 라틴어 어원이 ‘짜여진 것(thing woven)’이라는 점을 상기해보면, 김수자의 작업들은 여성적 행위를 환유하는 ‘바느질’로 만든 직물들을 보여줄 뿐 아니라 이것들이 인간에 의해 직조되고 기록되어 온 문화·역사적인 텍스트로 확장되는 것으로 해석할 수 있다. 작가의 작업은 부차적인 것으로 간주되어 온 여성들의 서사가 사실은 인류의 문화·역사 기반 곳곳에 짙게 배어있다는 점을 은연중에 보여주는 것이다. 우리는 김수자의 작업에서 역사의 주변부로 위치 지워진 영역들의 문화인류학적 전복을 읽을 수 있다.

김수자가 미술대학을 다니던 1970년대 말∼1980년대 초반의 우리나라 화단은 크게 단색화 계열과 민중미술 계열 작가들로 양분되어 있었다고 볼 수 있다. 그리고 다다적인 오브제· 행위 미술, 개념미술 등 실험적인 작업을 탐구하는 작가들도 일군 존재했다. 그러나 김수자는 “정치적 미술이 내재한 공격적 측면에 공감할 수 없었고” [1] 그렇다고 단색화의 시류를 따르고 싶지 않았다. 그는 미술대학을 다니던 당시 재료와 물성에 대한 탐구뿐 아니라 아방가르드적인 설치나 퍼포먼스를 시도하기도 했다. 그러면서도 캔버스 회화의 구조와 이 세계의 내적 구조에 대해 고민하고 있었다는 김수자는 우리 주변에 이미 존재하는 십자(十字)형의 기호에서 그 답을 찾고자 했다. 김수자는 이러한 수평·수직의 기하학적 기호는 역사 이전의 시간에서부터 전해 내려온 것이며, 이것이 보이지 않는 우주의 질서와 본질을 함축하고 있기 때문이라는 아이디어를 석사학위 논문으로 발전시켰다. [2]

김수자는 자신에게 불편하지 않고 익숙한 소재들인 실, 바늘 등을 사용하여 캔버스 틀을 벗어난, 콜라주 회화 작업을 시작했다. 그는 당시의 자신에 작업에 대해 서양의 현대미술에서 다루지 않았던 재료를 사용하여 “여성의 일상을 현대미술사의 문맥에서 재해석하고 펼쳐 보이려는” [3] 아방가르드적 접근이었다고 평가했다. 씨실과 날실이 종횡으로 엮인 비단 이불보, 그리고 이를 바늘이 수직으로 뚫고 들어가고 나가고를 반복하며 잇는 행위는 김수자가 구축해나가기 시작한 고유의 조형적 세계관을 시각적으로 풀어낸 형식이었다. 김수자의 초기 ‘꿰매기’ 회화는 곧 우리에게 잘 알려진 입체적 보따리 오브제로 변주되었고, 이 꿰매기와 보따리 모티프는 이후 전개된 작가의 영상작업에서도 영감의 원천이 되었다.

작가의 초기 ‘꿰매기’ 회화 작품은 사각형의 조각보들과 색동천을 한 땀 한 땀 바느질하여 이어붙인 것이다. 바느질 자국을 살펴보면 작가는 사실 이보다 더 규칙적이고 반듯하게 잘 꿰맸을 수 있었을 것이다. 어느 지점은 바느질이 듬성듬성하고 또 어느 지점은 꽤 촘촘하다. 사용된 천의 모양도 정확하게 재단된 정사각형이나 직사각형이 아니고, 모서리 실밥이 드문드문 풀어헤쳐진 것이 보인다. 작가는 당시 수평·수직의 문제에 깊이 빠져있었다고 했는데, 김수자의 조각보 콜라주 회화에 드러난 수평·수직은 몬드리안의 기하추상 회화와 달리 정확하고 단단하게 각이 잡혀있지 않다. 천 조각들을 덧대어 성기게 이어붙인 마디를 들추면 미세하게 벌어지는 틈이 남겨져 있는 것이다. 어떤 조각보 면은 검은 잉크와 아크릴 물감이 거칠게 덧발라져 있다. 수평과 수직의 조형요소로 추출된, 균형 잡힌 완전함에 대한 갈망에도 불구하고 본디 우리의 삶은 아무리 계획하고 재단해도 엉성하며 때로는 암흑으로 뒤덮이기도 한다는 것을 은유하듯 말이다.

김수자는 전통 가옥의 문살에 이 형형색색의 조각보들을 덧대거나 휘감는 설치 작업을 지나 조각보 자체를 볼륨을 가진 입체적 오브제로 발전시킨다. 그는 1992년 뉴욕현대미술관 PS1 레지던시에 참여했을 때, 이불보로 만든 보따리 작업을 선보였다. 뉴욕 레지던시에서 보따리에 싸인 자신의 짐을 보고 영감을 얻었던 것이다. 지금은 세대교체와 생활양식의 변화로 보따리가 흔하게 볼 수 있는 사물은 아니지만 당시 한국인에게 아주 익숙한 사물이었던 보따리는 그저 둥글게 말은 짐꾸러미였다. 그 꾸러미 안에는 귀한 선물이 들어있기도 하고, 장소를 옮겨가면서도 꼭 가지고 가야 하는 필수적이고 소중한 물건들이 싸매져 있었다. 불편한 이동 중에도 이고 지고 들고 간 짐꾸러미 보따리에는 낯선 곳에서 잘 뿌리내리고 살아가보겠다는 의지와 간절한 마음이 깃들어 있던 것이다.

보따리 오브제의 소재인 비단 이불보는 한국인이 겪는 생로병사의 흔적이 내재된 천이다. 우리는 이불 위에서 나고 죽으며, 잠들고 사랑한다. 한국 여성들은 여전히 인생의 큰 관문인 혼인을 준비할 때 혼수와 예단으로 이불을 준비한다. 김수자는 한국 전통색감의 이불보와 조각보를 사용한 것은 오직 오리엔탈리즘, 포스트식민주의, 한국의 지역적 미학에 대한 관심에서 비롯된 것이 아니라 그것들이 본인 삶의 큰 부분이었기 때문이었다고 말했다. [4] 또한 작가는 최근 인터뷰에서 “그 재료 자체가 현대미술의, 특히 회화의 평면성과 그 구조를 실험하는 유효한 출발점이라고 생각했고 만약 이것이 실존의 문제, 여성과 인간의 본질적 삶의 화두를 가져오는 재료가 아니었다면 쓰지 않았을 것” [5] 이라고 밝혔다. 1990년대에는 지구촌, 세계화가 화두였던 시기였다. 권력과 위계를 해체하는 포스트모더니즘 이론은 경제적·문화적 패권을 쥐고 있던 미국과 유럽 중심주의를 벗어나 주변부, 제3세계에 대한 관심을 불러일으켰다. 이에 따라 중심부에 편입되지 못하고 떠도는 자들에 대한 이야기(이산과 유목주의)가 미술계의 하나의 거대 주제로 부상하였다. 따라서 작가가 의도하였든 아니든, 이러한 한국적인 소재와 정서는 역으로 세계무대에서 좋은 반응을 얻었다.

보따리 오브제 설치는 영상작업으로 확장되었다. <떠도는 도시들 - 보따리 트럭 2727km>(1997)은 용달 트럭에 실린 보따리들 위에 올라앉은 작가의 뒷모습을 보여준다. 이 트럭은 어린 시절 작가가 이사 다녔던 우리나라의 지역들을 찾아 이동하는데, 이렇게 이동하는 작가의 뒷모습을 바라보던 관객은 마치 작가의 뒷자리에 함께 앉아 이사가는 그 상황 속에 놓인 듯한 느낌을 받게 된다. 덜컹거리며 나아가는 보따리 트럭에 몸을 싣고서 멀리 앞을 응시하는 작가의 모습은 명상적이다. 이동하는 그 상황 속에 함께 놓인 관객은 경계를 넘어 새로운 영토에 들어가 그가 맞닥뜨릴 삶에 대한 두려움, 희망 그리고 잠시 익숙했던 곳을 떠나야만 하는 아쉬움의 감정을 공유하게 된다. 그리고 묶은 머리를 길게 내려뜨린 이 여성이 홀로 짐꾸러미를 싸고 이를 트럭에 단단히 동여맸을 모습을 짐작하게 된다. 결국, 김수자의 보따리 트럭 영상작업은 때로는 정착에 성공하였을 테지만, 대부분은 본 땅에 안착하지 못하고 가장자리를 배회했을 외부인·이민자들의 외로운 역사의 기억을 여성의 몸으로써 불러일으킨다. 작가는 이 작업이 “나와 우리 가족의 뿌리에 관한 기록에 가까웠다”고 [6] 했다. 이 영상작업은 한스 울리히 오브리스트와 하랄드 제만이 각각 기획했던 국제 전시에 출품되었고, 이를 기점으로 김수자는 세계 미술계에서 명성을 쌓아갔다.

김수자의 최초의 영상작업 <바느질하며 걷기 - 경주>(1994)는 돌과 낙엽이 쌓인 땅 위에 원색의 이불보들을 넓게 펼쳐두고, 작가가 그 위를 걸으며 이불보들을 손으로 하나씩 거둬들이는 퍼포먼스 영상이다. 바닥에 깔린 다채로운 이불보들을 발로 밟고, 손으로 거둬들이며, 이를 팔에 걸치는 작가의 행위는 스스로 바늘의 역할을 하고 있음을 암시한다. 이는 퍼포먼스가 자연이라는 거대한 캔버스를 꿰매고 있음을 상징적으로 개념화 한 작업이었다. 또한 베틀을 이용해 실을 수평·수직의 엮어 손으로 삼베를 짜던 여성들의 전통적인 모습을 은유한다고 볼 수 있다. 전술하였듯, 생로병사의 흔적이 내재된 이불보를 긴머리를 하나로 묶은 여성이 바늘이 되어 그 속을 들고 나며 엮는 모습을 보여주는 것이다. 이 작업은 이후 제작된 김수자의 영상작업들에서 발견되는 공통적인 주제를 예고한다.

<바늘 여인>(1999∼2001)에서 작가는 8개의 각 화면 가운데 등을 보인 채 부동의 자세로 서 있다. <보따리 트럭>에서처럼 관객은 긴머리를 하나로 묶은 작가의 뒷모습을 보게 되고, 작가의 옆을 스쳐 지나가는 도쿄·상하이·멕시코시티·런던·델리·뉴욕·카이로·라고스 도심 속 수많은 군중들을 마주치게 된다. 8채널 영상 속 전 세계 군중들에 둘러싸인 관객은 그들의 바쁜 움직임과 강한 에너지를 함께 느끼게 된다. 제목에서 드러나듯 이 영상에서 작가는 명확하게 바늘의 역할을 자처하며, 여기에 지켜보는 관객도 가담시킨다. 그렇다면 바늘에 꿸 실과 원색의 원단들은 어디에 있는가. 바늘 여인 옆을 스쳐가는 한 사람, 한 사람이 각각의 날실이자 직물이 되는 것이다. 그 하나하나의 날실에 축적된 각자의 시간과 기억들, 삶의 아우라가 바늘 여인과 관객의 곁을 통과하는 것이다. 결국, 이 작업은 자유롭게 흐르는 이러한 수많은 날실들이 서로 엮이고 상호 관계되어 그 도시 고유의 사회문화적 콘텍스트가 만들어지고 있음을 함축적으로 보여준다. 바늘 여인인 작가는 이 과정에 관객이 적극 동참하도록 제안하면서 홀로 독창적이고 중심적인 모더니즘적 작가의 지위에서 벗어난다.

김수자의 비교적 최근 작업인 <실의 궤적>(2010∼2019)은 문화의 다양성에 대한 존중과 경의가 담긴 문화인류학적 다큐멘터리라고 부를 수 있다. 다양한 문화권의 직조문화를 다루고 있는 이 영상작업 시리즈는 6개의 장으로 구성되어 있는데, 각 챕터는 페루의 직물 문화(Ⅰ), 유럽의 레이스 문화(Ⅱ), 인도의 판목 날염 문화(Ⅲ), 중국의 자수 문화(Ⅳ), 미국 원주민의 직물과 바구니 문화(Ⅴ), 모로코의 모자이크 타일 문화(Ⅵ) 등을 기록하여 보여준다. 손으로 꿰매고, 엮고, 두드려서 만드는 각 민족 고유의 공예 방식과 그 민족이 살아온 대자연·고대 유적·건축물 등을 화면 속에 병렬한 것이다.

예를 들어, Ⅰ장에서는 페루 전통의상을 입은 여성이 꽃과 식물의 잎으로 염색한 실을 손으로 감고 돌려가며 직물(textile)을 짜고 있다. 고대 페루 문화에서 직물짜기는 개인과 지역의 정체성을 보여주는 중요한 방식이었다. 알파카·라마·양의 털 등 자연에서 온 원료가 여인의 손에서 실의 형태로 뽑혀 나와 텍스타일로 만들어지는 것이다. 작가는 페루 여성이 입고 있는 전통의상의 자수 문양과 그의 뒤로 보이는 고대 페루 유적지의 기하학적 패턴, 그리고 여성의 손에 의해 돌고 있는 실패의 모양에서 형태적 유사성이 발견되도록 카메라 촬영 구도를 의도하였다. 유럽의 레이스 제작문화를 다룬 Ⅱ장에서는 바람에 흔들리는 초목과 꽃을 보여주던 화면이 손으로 보빈 레이스를 만드는 유럽 여성의 모습으로 전환된다. 그리고 자연을 닮은 보빈 레이스의 문양과 유럽 건축물에서 발견되는 구조가 어떻게 연결되어 있는지 보여준다.

김수자의 이 영상작업은 여성은 자연, 남성은 문화와 연관되어 있다는 인류학의 전통적인 이분법적 서술에 부드럽게 저항한다. 여성적 작업의 기호인 공예와 텍스타일이 각 민족·지역의 텍스트, 콘텍스트를 구성하고 있음을 보여주는 것이다. 작가는 자연, 전통의상, 직물, 공예, 음식, 건축을 화면 속에 병치하고 뒤섞는 방식을 채택했다. 이를 통해 그동안 인류학자들이 특권적으로 규정해 온, 인간의 문화 및 사상의 발전사라는 거대 구조의 근저에는 젠더화 된 남성·여성적의 작업 모두 공존한다는 것을 암시한다.

바느질에서 출발한 김수자의 작업은 여성적인 행위와 노동을 자연, 결혼, 가족 등 여성에게 허락되어온 영역 속에 종속시켜 묘사하지 않고, 젠더화 된 권력과 지식체계를 균형 있게 재구성하는 시도를 보여준다. 인류의 문화양식은 서서히 축적되어 변증법적으로 발전되어 왔다. 이 발전과정 속에는 언제나 역사의 승자만 존재했던 것은 아니다. 김수자는 그다지 중요한 것으로 여겨지지 않았던, 중심의 바깥에 위치한 사물, 기억, 존재들을 작업 속으로 끌고 와 탐구자의 시선으로 조명한다. 이를 통해 서구의 지배적인 이론과 지식으로 편중된 우리 사고체계의 틈새에 새로운 무게 추를 올려둔다.

Kimsooja, of a slightly earlier generation than Suh, also had transformative experiences during her international residencies and exhibition work. Kim had studied painting at Hongik University in 1983 before she went to the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris in 1985. She then attended the visiting artists' studio programme at PS1 in Long Island, New York in 1992, and presented her Deductive Object in the following year.(1993) From the 1980s, the artist has incorporated sewing in her work, utilizing many different textiles: 'satins, linens, colour-striped silks and fine silk gossamers'.[1] The needle, in Kimsooja's projects, is a metaphor for travel, and the act of stitching, through fissure and suture, connects points and places of 'identity, mobility, borderlessness, and nomadism'.[2] Over time, her work began to incorporate her body as a performative index, becoming a signal, anchor and signifier of the duration of time spent in various locations. Earlier performance work in 1981 had involved the register of the horizontal and the vertical through the body in Structure: A Study on Body, a series of silkscreen photographs that record her performance.[3]

In the early 1990s Kimsooja participated in an important international travelling exhibition 'Cities on the Move', curated by Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist, that opened at the Secession in Vienna in 1997. The exhibition dealt with the rapidly changing East and Southeast Asian metropolis over the late twentieth century and displayed diverse artistic mediums like painting, sculpture, film, video, performance, installation and architecture. As well as Kimsooja, the show included work by fellow Korean artists Choi Jeong-hwa, Choi Wook, Kim Jinai, Koo Jeonga and Lee Bul, and by Korean architects Min Sohnjoo and Seung Hyosang (also known as Seung H-Sang)." True to its name, the exhibition travelled to many different cities in Asia and Europe, and a version of it was shown in New York at PS1 in 1998-9.

In conjunction with the show, Kimsooja produced her own mobile work, Cities on the Move-2727 KM Bottari Truck (1997), which travelled around various cities in Korea, and was shown at the São Paulo Biennale in 1998 and the Venice Biennale in 1999. While bottari in Korean means 'bundles' or 'the wrapping of personal belongings', the word also connotes a 'departure' (in the act of packing or wrapping 'bottari') and is traditionally associated with female domestic labour and a generational collectivity, passing from grandmother to mother to child. The sense of departure embedded in bottari refers both to Kim's own past – her father was a military employee who was posted to various locations over the course of her childhood - and also to her own voluntary migration around the globe. For eleven days and over 2,727 kilometres, the artist rode in the back of a blue truck surrounded by fabric bundles of bottari. Her motionless back was captured in photographs by the well-known Korean photographer Ju Myung Duk, and an accompanying video features a constantly shifting landscape that frames Kimsooja's dark silhouette and the colourful patchwork of bottari. The packing of bottari means that one is leaving or moving, choosing a new, unpredictable and possibly precarious state. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist in 1997, Kimsooja described the truck in terms of its association with 'homelessness, refugees or immigrants of any sort'.

In other works, such as A Needle Woman (1999-2001), which was shown at PS1 in 2001, the performative dimension of the artist's body becomes more prominent. In this video installation, filmed in Shanghai, Tokyo, New York and New Delhi, Kimsooja's body is like a stone in a river of people flooding a busy street, a bustling marketplace and a pedestrian thoroughfare. The artist, though once again only visible from the back, is a figure set apart, surrounded by crowds of people who come in contact with, and flow past, her body. When asked about the motivation for this work, Kimsooja replied:

"After this two-hour period, when I arrived at a street in Shibuya, where hundreds of thousands of people were constantly passing, like waves of a human ocean ebbing and flowing - I suddenly became aware of the meaning of my 'walking'. It was a breathtaking moment. I had to stop on the spot and stand still - creating a contradictory position against the flow of the pedestrians, like a needle or an axis, observing and contemplating them coming and going, weaving through and against my body as a medium, like a symbolic needle."

Weaving together sensations of different cities increasingly altered by global- ization, Kimsooja's body acts as a temporal anchor point for the line of sight, stitching together varied cultural and social circumstances in what David Harvey has described as 'a time-space compression that has had a disorienting and disruptive impact'.

Kimsooja's contemporary, Minjung Kim (b. 1962), also weaves a theme of nomadism through her work. Best known for her abstract, calligraphic and monochrome pictorial idioms, Minjung Kim works with colours and references that often derive from Korean tradition, a practice she began after she moved from Korea to Italy in the 1990s.29 Kim uses traditional Korean paper called hanji, often burning the edges of the paper with an incense stick, a practice that she began in the late 1990s in Milan. This repetitive practice has a performative dimension that stems from the artist's diasporic existence and psychological dislocation from her family and home country. By burning the edges of the hanji over many hours, Kim creates a layered, textured surface that leads to visible physical tensions and faultlines, as seen in The Room (2017; fig. 13). In her ink-based abstract paintings, the ink settles into saturated stains that merge into dark lines and flat areas. In reference to these, the artist has said that 'boundaries' and 'lines' represent an essential part of the human condition, creating a space where people collect and find security and psychological comfort. At the same time, Kim's lines invade, intermingle and smudge, reflecting the divisions that embody the artist's own complex identification with the local, collective history and marginalized identity of her hometown of Gwangju. The painter evokes her own dislocations through the work of cutting, accumulating, layering and burning.

While most people were locking down this May, Korean artist Kimsooja was hanging out laundry, in a wood northeast of Malmö, not too far from the border between Sweden and Denmark, on the site of a medieval castle and an organic farm. Between the trees, 100 pristine white bedsheets are pinned to clotheslines and flap, like so many captured cartoon ghosts, in the wind. They give an idea of stains removed, fresh starts, new beginnings, extreme hygiene and slates wiped clean. And, with their embroidered trims (an example of local craftspersonship), of old traditions of manufacture and housework, which to a lot of us might seem anachronistic in a world of urbanised living, rapid manufacture, household convenience and washing machines. White: the mark of mourning, purity and rebirth. Or perhaps all this is to overthink what is simply evidence of an easily comprehensible, quotidian routine.

But overthinking is a pastime in which many of us have had an opportunity to indulge over the past few months. Locked down, changing our routines, afraid of other people, afraid of going out, conjuring profundity out of banality and, egged on by politicians around the world, constantly redefining what we mean by ‘normal’. As if the term was anything other than subjective in the first place.

The sheets make up an artwork titled A Laundry Field (2020). If that ‘A’ before ‘laundry field’ suggests that it is one of many, it is. And in more ways than one. On the one hand, because what we see is nothing new: many people around the world hang out their washing to dry; they’ve been doing it since they had things to wash, and things to hang them on. If you stumbled across the washables here, at Wanås Konst, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was simply evidence of a routine interrupted by, say, a sudden global health emergency meaning that no one was around to take it in. On the other hand, A Laundry Field is a development of earlier works by Kimsooja, such as Mumbai: A Laundry Field (2007–08), a multi-channel video that uses footage of the city to cast the overcrowded Maharashtra port as a field inhabited by people wearing clothes and people cleaning or drying clothes. Both works play with their ‘matter-of-fact’ nature and are evocative in their banality, their normality and the ways in which they accept – but do not insist on – projection and interpretation on the part of the viewer. You want to see garments as embodying the history and traces of human bodies? Fine. You just see ordinary life? That’s a truth too. It’s a form of equivocation that lies at the heart of much of Kimsooja’s work. And, you might say, at the heart of much good art. ‘I saw art in life and life as art,’ the artist said in a 2008 interview with Susan Sollins. ‘I couldn’t separate one from another. So my gaze to the world and my questions were always related to life itself.’

Kimsooja’s best known works feature bottari, a traditional Korean cloth bundle used to wrap goods in preparation for transport by hand. While such fabrics (bottari are often recycled from colourful bedspreads) have acquired links over time to the gendering of labour, the dynamics of domestic and civic power and the segregation of public and private space, bottari bundles are also evocative of displacement and migration (frequently, and particularly in terms of Korea’s modern history, as a result of war and famine), symbolic of both the home and a lack of one.

Although this interest is born of the artist’s Korean cultural heritage – her own ‘reality’, as she puts it – it developed as a medium to be used in more than just two-dimensional works (the artist trained as a painter) when she was displaced from that heritage, during a 1992 residency at moma ps1 in New York. There, the museum became a space in which to accept the bottari’s cultural baggage and to subvert it. In the resultant installation, Deductive Object, she inserted fragments of Korean bedcovers into gaps in the gallery’s brick wall and made static sculptures out of a series of everyday objects covered in bottari cloth. Over the years the bottari works have developed simultaneously as a reality and an abstraction, similar to the way in which civic and social culture across the world has drifted these past few months. Cities on the Move – 2727 Kilometers Bottari Truck (1997, first shown in the group exhibition Cities on the Move, from which the work’s title derives) was a performance and video documenting the artist’s 11-day journey across South Korea, visiting places with which she had a personal connection, on the back of a truck overloaded with tied bottari bundles; To Breathe: A Mirror Woman (2006) saw her clad Madrid’s Crystal Palace in translucent, light-refracting film in such a way that the building itself and the atmosphere within it became a colourful wrapping, a type of bottari.

At the same time Kimsooja has expanded such interests beyond her own cultural inheritance in works like the ongoing Thread Routes (2010–), a series of videos inspired after witnessing traditional lace- making in Bruges in 2002. Taking the performative elements of local textile cultures as its subject, the first focuses on Peruvian weaving and the relationship it has with issues of tradition, gender, historic and vernacular architecture, and local landscapes.

Further chapters have explored European, Indian, Chinese, Native American and Moroccan practices to create a body of work that further evokes relationships between the particular and the universal, and brings to mind the poetry of mystics such as Kabir. A fifteenth-century Muslim weaver from India, Kabir linked the process of textile manufacture to meditation on and exploration of the divine in his verses. Indeed, they proved to be so successful and easily comprehensible that his influence spans both Islam and Hinduism, and the practices of Bhakti and yoga. Works by Kimsooja such as To Breathe: A Mirror Woman and the interactive installation Archive of Mind (2016) have featured recordings of the artist’s own breathing as components of the installation, while she refers to the videos that make up Thread Routes as a form of “visual poetry”.

“The reality of myself and my culture has constantly and gradually evolved, and rather dramatically since I moved to New York,” the artist writes as we exchange emails between London and Korea and their respective lockdowns.

“This move gave me the perspective of my own culture as part of a multi-cultural context. Yet, I held the string of my particular personal life as a continuum that questions fundamental and existential problems: what Zen Buddhism describes as ‘Wha Du (in Korean, Gong An in Chinese)’. This might have given me the consistency and long breath in my career.” She’s referring to the practice in which a story, statement or question is used to provoke a crisis of doubt in the mind of a student of Zen on their pathway to enlightenment. And perhaps nowhere in her work is such a crisis evoked more than in the video series A Needle Woman (1999–2001). In it the artist, clad in grey, is recorded, standing motionless, her back to camera, generally against the flow of traffic, in some of the busiest pedestrian junctions in some of the most densely populated metropolises in the world (Shanghai, Tokyo, Mexico City and Delhi). It’s a work that explores the ways in which losing yourself is linked to finding yourself, about the individual and the collective, and one that has added resonance now that crowds are a source of added fear. The last is something the Nobel Prize-winning writer Elias Canetti described as ‘the touch of the unknown’ in his 1960 analysis of relations between the self and others, Crowds and Power. Although one of Canetti’s assertions – ‘It is only in a crowd that a man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which fear turns into its opposite’ – is looking a bit shaky right now.

“Artists often discover the art in daily life,” the artist writes, “and bring daily life to the museum to contextualise it within art history.” Indeed, even before the intrusions of urinals and readymades and the age of modern art museums, attempts by the authors of poetry (whether visual or written) to engage with the unauthored poetics of everyday life have enjoyed a rich history, not least in painting, and works by Joseon artists such as Danwon, or the seventeenth-century Dutch masters. Yet on the site of the museum there is often a question about what – between daily life and art history – is contextualising or responding to what. And an anxiety about whether it is the artworks in a museum or the circumstances of lived experience that gets audiences closer to truths about the world. All of which responds to a more general paranoia that what enters the museum is removed from lived life. And perhaps it’s a paradox of museum culture for artists like Kimsooja that the more she has sought to introduce the ordinary, the more her work is celebrated as extraordinary.

As we discuss A Laundry Field, Kimsooja explains that her works have been shown mostly within the museum context, but for a few exceptions. “In museum spaces,” she writes, “I used fans, lights, and sounds to give a vibration to it and bring sensation to the audiences as they encounter the persona of the fabrics. When situated within nature, such as Wanås sculpture park [the Swedish foundation is located in a natural landscape], the wind, light, cast shadows of trees, and bird sounds paint the laundered bedcovers and evoke the memories and poetics of the bedcovers. I find A Laundry Field installed at Wanås sculpture park gives an experience that blurs the boundary between daily life and the museum context that maximises the audience’s imagination and experience.” Reading this, it’s hard not to think of the new work as an attack on the exceptionalism of the museum context.

In that, the exhibition at Wanås, titled Sowing into Painting, goes a little further than other works by Kimsooja. It traces a circle through her varied output (it contains chapters one, two and four of Thread Routes, a series of the Deductive Objects (1993–2020), Meta-Painting (2020, which comprises stretched and frame linen canvases as well as bottaris made of linen canvas and used clothes) and To Breathe (2020, an evolution of the work shown in Madrid). And it traces a circle through the manufacture of painting in the title work Sowing into Painting, a field sown with two types of flax that are harvested to produce canvas and other fabrics as well as the linseed oil that is classically used as a binding agent in Western painting. It returns the exceptional to the normal, culture to nature, and a life observed (not least in the types of paintings of ‘everyday’ life that populate museums and other archives) to a life lived.

Zweimal in ihrem 37-jährigen Werk hat sich die südkoreanische Künstlerin auf ihr persönliches Leben bezogen. Im Herbst 2019 stellt Kimsooja einen 6 mal 2,4 mal 2,6 Meter großen Container auf den Platz vor die Kathedrale von Poitiers (s. Kunstforum Nr. 265) und markiert damit ihren Abschied von New York, wo sie, seit den ersten Stipendien bis heute, fast 30 Jahre gelebt hatte. Ein radikaler Wendepunkt, denn seither pendelt Kimsooja zwischen Seoul und Paris, wo sie sich vielleicht in der Zukunft niederlassen wird, auch wenn sie längst im Unterwegssein zuhause ist. Der Container aber birgt nicht nur ihre Umzugskisten, sondern auch ihre künstlerische Weltsicht: Gelb, Rot, Blau, Weiß, Schwarz, Gelb, Rot, Blau … skandieren die leuchtenden Streifen auf seinen Wänden die alte koreanische Tradition eines Farbkosmos, der bis heute das analogische Denken der Künstlerin prägt: So entspricht Blau dem Holz, Rot dem Feuer, Gelb dem Erdmittelpunkt, Weiß dem Metall und Schwarz dem Wasser; die fünf Elemente finden ihr Pendant in den fünf Himmelsrichtungen und Jahreszeiten, die ihrerseits um ein Zentrum kreisen. Wie das Farbspektrum lebendig wird im Sonnenlicht, so erwacht der Kosmos im universalen Atemstrom zu beständiger Wandlung und Bewegung. Ein webender Austausch verbindet alle Elemente, Zeiten, Winde und Wesen zu unaufhörlich neuen Analogiereihen. Der Container hat den Titel „Bottari 1999 – 2019“ und holt damit den zweiten ebenso radikalen Wendepunkt ins Gedächtnis: Zur Biennale von Venedig 1999, stellt Kimsooja in Harald Szeemanns d’Apertutto ihren blauen „Bottari Truck in Exile“ vor eine Raum öffnende Spiegelwand. Das Vehikel ist Zeitzeuge ihrer Abschiedsreise von Korea, als ihr fester Wohnsitz in New York entschieden war. In elf Tagen hatte sie 2.727 Kilometer zurückgelegt und in den Orten ihrer Erinnerung die Einwohner um ausgediente Kleider und Bettüberwürfe gebeten. Gefaltet, eingewickelt, an den Stoffenden zusammengeknotet, so entstanden die traditionellen Reisebündel, die seidigen, farbenreichen „Bottaris“, die bald zum Leitmotiv ihrer Arbeit werden sollten. Zwischen den anwachsenden Bergen von Bottaris auf der offenen Ladefläche des Lasters sitzend fuhr sie über Bergpässe und Feldwege: „Cities on the Move – 2.727 Kilometers Bottari Truck“ hieß diese erste gefilmte Performance.

Als Artist in Residence am PS1, hatte die Künstlerin 1992 in ihrem New Yorker Atelier zum ersten Mal den skulpturalen Aspekt ihrer eigenen Reisebündel gesehen. Von jeher war sie an die Gestik gewöhnt, Kleider, Hausrat, Bücher mit den Bettüberwürfen, die traditionell in jede Familie gehörten, zusammenzubinden. Auf diesen Tüchern, den kunstvoll gewirkten Ybulbos, wurde geruht, geliebt, geschlafen, darin wurden Säuglinge auf den Rücken gebunden und getragen, Kranke und Tote transportiert. Die Funktionen der Ybulbos beschreiben also einen Existenzbogen. 1994 hatte die Künstlerin in Korea ihre erste Installation photographiert: Bottaris auf der Türschwelle eines verlassenen Hauses, im südkoreanischen Dorf Yangdong, der Umgebung von Gyeongju. Die leuchtend farbigen, kunstvoll gewirkten Bottaris als Spuren von Angst, Hast und Flucht vor diktatorischer Unterdrückung. Dieser politische Hintergrund prägt die Bilder der Performance-Reise, „Cities on the Move – 2.727 Kilometers Bottari Truck“. Die Gesten des Zusammenfaltens, Bündelns, Knotens hatten den Rhythmus dieser Zeitreise bestimmt. Als Bottari der Gegenwart hatte die Künstlerin sich selbst verstanden, die auf ihrer Reise in die Zukunft versucht, Spuren der Vergangenheit zu sammeln. Denn die ausgedienten Kleider und Bettüberwürfe mit ihren Gerüchen und eingeprägten Gesten sind für Kimsooja vor allem dies: Erinnerungsvehikel menschlicher Gegenwart. Ähnlich wie Photographien bezeugen sie vergangenes Leben.

In diesem Sinn hatte Kimsooja im Jahr 1995, zum 15. Jahrestag des Massakers von Gwangju, auch hier abgelegte Kleidung und Bett-Tücher gesammelt. Die südkoreanische Stadt war weltweit bekannt geworden durch den von Studenten angeführten, massiven Aufstand der demokratischen Bewegung, die vom Militärregime im Mai 1980 brutal niedergeschlagen worden war. Kimsooja baut kein Monument. „Sewing into Walking“ heißt ihre Performance: Die Künstlerin schleppt Bottari um Bottari in den Wald des Massenfriedhofs, und deckt im langsamen Gehen die alten Kleider und Ybulbos über die Erde, als müßte sie heilend gewärmt werden, als müßte den Toten, die Umarmung ihrer Nachbarn nachgetragen werden. So näht Kimsooja tatsächlich die Vergangenheit in die Gegenwart, näht Zeiträume, Entstehen und Vergehen zusammen. Auf ihrem Weg, in ihrem „Walking“, tritt sie zum ersten Mal als verkörperte Nadel auf, die in ihrer Vertikalität die horizontale Kleiderschicht mit der Erde verbindet.

In dieser Künstlerauffassung eines konzeptuellen Nähens, hatte sie 1984 in Seoul, nach ihrem Studium der Malerei, die Arbeit „The Earth and the Heaven“ aus Seidenresten zusammengenäht, ein Achsenkreuz aus den Farbfeldern der fünf Elemente. Was sie daran interessierte, war die Gestik an der Grenze, die Nadelbewegung selbst, in ihrem verbindenden Durchqueren unterer und oberer Schichten, die Kimsooja wie selbstverständlich auf die Zeit, den Raum und das Universum bezieht. Die Bewegung der Hände, wenn sie die vier Stoffzipfel der farbenreichen Bett-Tücher unter- und übereinander führen und einen Knoten festzurren, ist der nähenden Geste vergleichbar. Wenn aus dem Falten und Bündeln des Tuches nun eine kugelförmige Dreidimensionalität entsteht, erscheint es für Kimsooja wiederum selbstverständlich, darin eine Welt zu sehen. Damit nähert sie sich, so könnte man es sehen, über ihr experimentell künstlerisches Tun, einem Mathematiker und Philosophen der europäischen frühen Aufklärung: Leibniz war aus dem spirituell-körperlichen Doppelcharakter des Tuches und dessen Faltungen, die er eingehend betrachtet hatte, die Einsicht hergeleitet, das gesamte Universum sei ein einziger kontinuierlicher, sich wandelnder Körper, der verschiedene Gestalten annimmt. Die Möglichkeit dieser Parallele zeigt die transkulturelle Dimension, die Kimsoojas Weltsicht öffnet.

In einer Reihe von Performances zwischen 1999 und 2005 erweitert sie die Logik ihrer Künstlerkonzeption, Nadel zu sein. Als unbewegliche Gestalt im grauen Gewand wird sie in der Rückenansicht für den Zuschauer zum Medium, das vermag, den Atem und die Wahrnehmung zu verlangsamen, den Betrachter hineinzuziehen in verdichtete Situationen des Zeitraums. So sehen wir sie 1999 in Japan, als „A Needle Woman – Kitakyushu“, horizontal auf einem langen, glatten Felsen ausgestreckt; ihr Körper verbindet sich mit der grauen Gesteinsformation, zeichnet die Grenzlinie zwischen Himmel und Erde nach. Der Zuschauer, auf ihren Rücken schauend, atmet wie sie den offenen Himmelsraum und dessen Stille, teilt ihr Erleben. Ein Jahr später steht sie in Indien an der Böschung des Yamuna River; vorübertreibende Verbrennungsreste zeigen sein stetiges Strömen. Kimsooja nennt sich hier „A Laundry Woman – Yamuna River“, schaut in dunstige horizontlose Ferne, weiß, der Fluß wird weiterströmen, auch nach ihrem Lebensende. In folgenden großen Video-Reihen, steht sie im Mittelpunkt von dicht bevölkerten Metropolen, wie Tokio, Mexico City, London oder Kairo. Ihre unbewegliche graue Gestalt erscheint als Seismograph im Zeitstrom der vorüberziehenden Menschenmassen; ein Strom, der kaum innehält, wenn das Gesicht eines Vorübergehenden dem ihren begegnet. In einer zweiten großen Serie bereist sie ebenso als unbeweglicher Zeitzeuge, konzentriert auf ihr physisch gegenwärtiges Sein, die Krisenherde der Zeit, Havanna, Rio de Janeiro, Jerusalem, N’Djamena, Sana’a, Patan und Nepal. Fast einem Kriegsreporter gleich, muß sie in dieser zweiten Performance-Reihe, oftmals um ihr Leben fürchten. Ihre Präsenz bewegt sich also auch hier an einer Grenze. Die Identifikation mit der physischen Zeugenschaft der Künstlerin, mag im Betrachter eine neue Aufmerksamkeit für das Weltgeschehen wecken. Die Video-Installation der zweiten Reihen war 2005 in Aperto zu sehen.

Vom Phänomen der Nadelbewegung, vom Prinzip ihres Verbindens verschiedener Raum- und Zeitschichten ausgehend, entwickelt Kimsooja von nun an erweiterte Bildkonzeptionen, indem sie das Phänomen des Spiegels, das schon angeklungen war, zum Thema macht. Denn auch der Spiegel führt verschiedene Raumschichten zusammen. Wie die Nadel bleibt der Spiegel unsichtbar, erschafft Bilder und verschwindet mit ihnen. Wie die Nadel markiert der Spiegel eine Grenze des Raums. Auch sein Auftritt bezeichnet eine Grenze der Zeit, den haarscharfen Augenblick, wenn Zeit erst geschieht. Im Palacio de Cristales in Madrid verband Kimsooja dieses Agieren des Spiegels mit ihrem ruhigen Atemgeräusch. „To breathe – A Mirror Woman“ hieß die Arbeit, im Jahr 2006: Einer lebendigen Bestimmungsgröße des Raums gleich, so steht sie als zierliche schwarze Gestalt auf einem grenzauflösenden Spiegelboden, inmitten von hohen, funkelnden Glaswänden, die mit einem optischen Prisma beschichtet sind. Kein Halt nirgends: Unter den Füßen werden die Glaskuppeln zum schwankenden Abgrund, der Körper schwebt im Raum, dessen Grenzen zerstieben in einem Feuerwerk der Spektralfarben. Atmender, Licht durchpulster Raum. Damit öffnet Kimsooja ihre Performance für den Betrachter, der hier nun selbst die Bewegungen von Raum und Zeit ausloten kann.

Das ist der Absprung für die Künstlerin in eine bis dahin nicht gekannte Freiheit, die Welt aus dem Blickwinkel des Ein- und Ausfaltens von Stoffbahnen zu verstehen: Kimsooja findet ihre Bilder auf der Straße und in der Natur. So beobachtet sie die Wäscher in den Armenvierteln von Mumbai: die daraus entstandene Videoinstallation heißt, „Mumbai: A Laundry Field“, 2007–2008. Die Kamera schafft eine Analogie zwischen Körper und Tuch, wenn die Wäscher ihre harte Arbeit, das Bürsten und Reiben, das Ausspülen, Wringen und Ausschlagen der hoch auffliegenden, spritzenden Stoffe unterbrechen und sich selbst unter den Wasserschlauch stellen. Daneben Bilder von der alten Gleichung Habitat und Habit, wenn Obdachlose ihren Schlafplatz auf der Straße und sich selbst mit Tüchern schützen.

Die seltenen Weltgegenden, die von menschlicher Zerstörung noch bewahrt sind, sind das Thema in einer Folge von acht Filmen, die das unaufhörliche Verwandeln im Austauschtanz der Elemente beobachtet: „Earth-Water-Fire-Air“, 2009 – 2010. Achtmal zeigt die Kamera deren fließende Interdependenz: Das innere Feuer der Erde und seine rotglühende Lava erstarren zu schwarzen, noch weiterglühenden Gesteinsflammen; das Feuer kann ohne die Luft nicht sein; eine Wasseroberfläche gleicht Bodenwellen; eine Meereswelle schlägt meterhoch gegen einen Felsen, während ihre im Sonnenlicht aufwehende Gischt das Feuerwerk der Spektralfarben entfacht – unmögliche, alltägliche Verbindung von Feuer und Wasser. Was Kimsooja zeigt, ist das haarscharf austarierte Zusammenwirken der Elemente und ihrer Kräfte, deren Wandlungen ohne unser Zutun beständig neue Bilder erzeugt, an der Zeitgrenze des Augenblicks. Kimsooja zeigt die andere Seite: Als gelte es für den Betrachter ein Atemreservoir zu schaffen, trägt sie unermüdlich Bilder zusammen aus einer weiterlebenden Harmonie. Ihr Künstlercredo heißt verbinden, heilen, weben, statt trennen, zerreißen und verwerfen. „Thread-Routes“ ist der Titel ihrer bis heute weitergeführten Folge, die 2010 begann, und bisher sechs abgeschlossene Filme umfaßt: Quer durch die Welt folgt die Künstlerin hier den selten gewordenen Spinnerinnen, Weberinnen, Klöpplerinnen, Gerbern und Stoffdruckern mit der Kamera. Auf den Gebirgspfaden des Altiplano von Peru beobachtet sie, wie alteingeübte Hände Schafswolle zu Fäden zwirbeln, im Gehen, die Spindel kreiseln lassen, irgendwo unterwegs einen Haken in die Erde schlagen, Fäden spannen und ihr Weben beginnen. Der Wiederholungstanz uralter Gesten beseelt von Afrika bis Kroatien diese Filme, deren Bilder immer wieder das Weben des Windes, der Wolken, des Lichts und der Schatten verbinden mit den fabrizierenden Händen und ihren Fadenwegen. Die Akteure sind in jedem Filmabspann mit Namen aufgeführt, oftmals zusammengenähte Namen aus den ursprünglichen und später aufgezwungenen Kulturen. Vier dieser Filme waren im Herbst 2019 in Poitiers zu sehen. Nichts ist nostalgisch; die Bilder leben aus dem dokumentierten Tun heraus.

Nichts manipulieren, nichts hinzufügen, das ist ihr Schaffensprinzip. Kimsooja, die ihre Arbeit aus ihrer pragmatischen Beobachtung entwickelt, anerkennt nur ein Künstlervorbild: John Cage. Kurz nach ihrem Studium hatte sie 1985 zur Biennale von Paris dessen weißen Container gesehen. Im Innenraum seiner Leere und Stille war an der Wand ein einziger Satz zu lesen: „Whether you try to make it or not, the sound is heard“. Diese Worte haben die Künstlerin seither begleitet und bestärkt in ihrer Künstlerhaltung eines „Non-Making“, in ihrer Überzeugung, keine Gegenstände herzustellen. Bis heute ist sie davon nicht abgerückt. Während ihrer Ausstellung in Poitiers, im Herbst 2019, sind die Besucher aufgefordert, an einem „Archive of Mind“ mitzuwirken. Im Palais der Ducs d’Aquitaine steht, wie zuvor im Museum für zeitgenössische Kunst in Seoul, der große ovale Holztisch mit seinen Schemeln. Die Gäste bedienen sich aus großen Lehmklumpen, setzen sich an den Tisch, drehen ihre Handvoll Lehm zu einer Kugel und hinterlassen sie dort. Die Stille öffnet das Gehör für ein leises auf- und absteigendes Wassergurgeln, ein vertikales Echo auf die horizontalen Kreisbahnen am Tisch. Es dauert, bis eine Kugel sich formt. Die Wiederholungsgeste wird zum Alltagsfilter. Das Freigeben eines eigenen Bottari öffnet einen anderen Denkraum. Sich beteiligen, ohne zu besitzen, ohne zu besetzen.

Diese Logik wird einen Kreis schließen, wenn Kimsooja im Verlauf von 2020 im Park der schwedischen Wanås Foundation, Leinen aussäen, seine blau blühenden Felder, seine Ernte und schließlich das Fadenspinnen und Weben von groben Leinwänden beobachten wird. Keine Objekte, keine Bilder. Auch nicht im Dezember 2020, wenn sie in der Kathedrale von Metz ein Fenster aus dichroitischem Glas herstellen wird: eigentlicher Autor werden die Farbbrechungen des Lichts sein. Was sie erschafft, sind Seherfahrungen, mit Leibniz gesagt, ein schauendes Denken.