Kimsooja - To Breathe — Constellation

Carte blanche to Kimsooja, presented at the Bourse de Commerce - Fondation Pinault, Paris (until 23 September 2024).

As a nomadic artist concerned with issues of exile, collective memory and urban space, South Korean artist Kimsooja, who describes herself as a ‘needle woman’ (A Needle Woman is one of her most emblematic videos), weaves her way through the meshes, uncovering the social and cultural fabric of the places she passes through.

The singular work of this South Korean artist began to take off internationally as soon as she finished her painting studies in Seoul and her engraving studies in Paris. Her first works made use of fabric, her favourite material, because of its plastic possibilities, its cultural connotations and its roots in traditional practice. From the end of the 1990s onwards, she began to work in the field of performance and video, documenting spaces and crowds in the midst of which she remains frozen, lying down or with her back to the camera, reconciling travel and immobility.