Kim Soo-Ja uses cloth as her preferred material; consisting of Bojagis (Korean wrapping clothes) of various textures or brightly colored bed covers with gold or silver embroidery which are anonymous objects in her artwork that have been mostly used by someone in the past. Cloth is the most intimate material to human beings, from the moment of birth to death it accompanies man in all stages of life. Apart from wrapping our bodies it has also functioned as a container to hold stuff. Thus the cloth in Kim Soo-Ja's work is an object that relates to not only the course of everyday life but also retains the memories of rituals of significant ceremonies such as coming-of-age, wedding, funeral, and ancestor worship, a sign signifying the entirety of human existence.

Kim Soo-Ja's work began with two dimensional work and has encompassed installation, video and performance. Despite the diverse range of such formal representations the real character of her art work can be seen in such performative processes as sewing, wrapping, holding, inserting, hanging, and loading. And therefore her work is not only about the finished physical object but there is a dedication to the process of these actions. The artist verifies the physical sites of man's desires, leisure and passions in the selected cloths, and through the act of handling the cloth she is expressing the physicality of lived lives. In Kim Soo-Ja's work there is a constant focus on departure, return, wandering and transforming.

Kim Soo-Ja has been working with the Bottari since 1992. The Bottari which is used to wrapping innumerable amounts of clothes in itself is a two dimensional plane that assumes three dimensional volume. Her Bottari functioning as spatial objects takes on a dual structure of an interior and exterior, and as a symbolic instrument. Conventionally wrapping the Bottari into bundles alludes to departure or moving. It is also a body that envelops a veiled spirituality within. As the body encapsulates the spirit, so does the external skin of Bottari contain a realm of spirituality. Thus Kim Soo-Ja's bottaris. embrace both the visible and invisible.

The global project titled Cities on the Move – 2727 km Bottari Truck- that is presented at 24th São Paolo Biennale is a comprehensive work that touches on many of the artist's earlier work. The truck which is loaded full with bottaris, in a state of travel, is installed within the gallery. And in actuality they contain packs of memories and aspirations culled from the journeys across cities and landscapes.

The Bottari Truck by Kim Soo-Ja has a dual structure. As the concept of departure and transit embodied by the bottaris is juxtaposed with the truck these concepts are translated into physical acts of departing and transiting. And in this context there is a link that connects the travels of the Bottari Truck with the artist's sewing work. That is, just as the needle finishes an object by piercing the inside and outside of cloth so the progress of the truck produces concepts by leaving traces of stitches across the earth's surface. Kim Soo-Ja's use of the needle (journey) is an expression of the will to communicate across cultural, territorial borders across continents an affirmation of multi-cultural plurality wherein diverse histories and cultures of foreign peoples coexist.