Creating an oeuvre out of a material heavily steeped in traditional connotations is a delicate undertaking, but that is what Kimsooja has been doing with bottari, the Korean wrapping cloth used for carrying household goods. Reconfigured in an art-institutional setting, the material has proved to be versatile in function and rich in suggestion.

Kimsooja's work deftly negotiates the treacherous territory between cultural co-optation and subversion, subtly implicating the viewers' attitudes and responses to chart the passage. In her early efforts, bundles of bottari were arranged as enigmatic sculptural masses. Resembling silent, burden-laden bodies, they evoked the histories of women's perseverance within the strictures of a patriarchal society. The act of transferring these objects from the domestic realm to the rarefied and privileged gallery setting was disconcerting.

Kimsooja has further deployed the method of re-contextualisation to address issues ranging from the aesthetic to the political. For an exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, in 1995 — and at the Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, in 1997 — she situated the bottari in that commercial/aesthetic borderland of art institutions, the cafe. Squares of colourful cloth, embroidered with Oriental patterns, were laid across tables, making cafe patrons complicit in the ambivalent pleasure experienced by connoisseurs of the exotic. This work implicitly questioned the process by which utilitarian or ritual value is displaced by the commodity of mystique as it crosses the boundaries of tastes and cultures.

Forgoing the high-handed "critique" of art practices that assert the subjectivity of the other, Kimsooja opts for an unassuming yet seductive approach. What makes this strategy effective is that her aims are generous enough first to engage the viewers with aesthetic satisfaction (who could resist the sensual allure of the sheen, texture, and colour of her work?) before gently inducing them to acknowledge whatever complacent perceptions of gender, nation, and society they may have held.