Korean Art from the 19th Century to the Present by Charlotte Horlyck

Author:Charlotte Horlyck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

137 Kimsooja, Sewing Into Walking – Dedicated to the Victims of Gwangju, 1995, used bedclothes and used clothes, speakers, ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon, installation at the 1st Kwangju Biennale.

Nowadays Kimsooja is known for multi-disciplinary works that span textile, sculpture, video, photography and site-specific installations, and she is recognized as one of the most innovative and significant artists on the global arts scene. The site-specific installation she created for the Kwangju Biennale was informed by her interest in cloth and sewing as a contemplative and healing practice. For Sewing into Walking: Dedicated to the Victims of Gwangju, she placed 2.5 tonnes of clothes in bundles on a mountainside near the Biennale site (illus. 137). At the site John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ was played over loudspeakers. Visitors were invited to confront their memories and feelings of the Uprising by physically interacting with the clothes and the bundles, which symbolized the victims. For Kimsooja, the two-month duration of the show added to the meaning of the work. She argued that as ‘the seasons changed and the clothes became mixed with the soil, rain, and falling leaves, [they became] like dead bodies . . . The audience – the Korean people – opened the bundles and removed nearly one ton of clothes; they hung some onto the trees and took others away with them.’74 In addition to its political message and healing function, Kimsooja’s work signifies the pivotal changes that took place within the Korean art world around this time. In particular, it demonstrated how art was no longer locked in a dialogue between maker and material. It became part of a wider dialectic of social exchange, where preconceived notions of what art and artists are became less relevant.

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