The South Korean contemporary artist, Kim Soo-Ja changed her name to Kimsooja when she needed to pick a domain name for her website in 2003. She realized that domain names change any names to one word. In her “A One-Word Name Is An Anarchist’s Name,” she became Kimsooja, a name that would not reveal her gender or cultural identity.
Kimsooja is a multidisciplinary artist working with textile, especially traditional Korean fabrics, sculpture, video, photography, and site-specific installations. Since the 1990s, Kimsooja has been exhibiting widely in the world and is considered one of the most innovative artists working today.
Sewing and needlework are fundamental to Kimsooja’s practice. She speaks about her experience of darning bedsheets with her mother in Korea. “I experienced an intimate yet astonishing sense of unity of my thoughts, sensibilities and actions. I found the possibility of containing such an abundance of memory and pain, even an affection for life, in that unity” (p. 29). The artist experienced “the energy of universe suffusing her entire body” (p. 31).
The colorful Korean bedcover called ybulbo tightly bundles used clothing and becomes Bottari as objects. Bottari is used to wrap and carry one’s possessions They can be made from any fabrics, but Kimsooja specifically used abandoned Korean bedcovers made for newlyweds, traditionally hand-sewn women’s work. Kimsooja’s Bottari objects reference bodies, particularly the bodies of women and their general condition in Korean society, but they also speak to the human condition in a broader sense—migration, movement, transition, and personal memories. Bottari objects reflect one’s life, history, and cultural identity, both as an individual and collective.
Image 1: Front cover Image 2: D’Apertutto, or Bottari Truck in Exile, 1999 Image 3: Cities on the move – 2727 Kilometer Bottari Truck, 1997 – 2001 (production still) Image 4: A Laundry Woman, 2000 Image 5: Bottari, 2000
Kimsooja : unfolding [publication coordination, Stephanie Rebick, Vancouver Art Gallery]. Kim, Soo-ja, 1957- Vancouver : Vancouver Art Gallery ; Ostfildern : Hatja Cantz, 2013. 183 p. : many col. ill. ; 29 cm. English Exhibition catalog. On the occasion of an exhibition held at Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, October 11, 2013 - January 26, 2014. Exhibition curated by Daina Augaitis. ISBN : 9783775732345 (hd.bd.) ISBN : 3775732349 (hd.bd.) 2013 HOLLIS number: 990138249290203941
