Kimsooja was born in 1957 in Taegu in the South Korea.
After she studied painting at Hong-Ik University in Seoul, she went to Paris on a French government scholarship to attend the Lithography Studio at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. From 1992, she went to New York as an artist-in-residence for the International Studio Program of P.S.1. Since then, she has been working internationally as she took part in Istanbul Biennale in 1997, "Cities on the Move" exhibition in 1997-2000, Venice Biennale in 1999, 2001, 2005, and 2007. Her solo exhibition traveled from 2003 to 2004, which started at Lyon Contemporary Art Museum. She had her solo exhibition at Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid in 2006.
Kimsooja uses photography, installation, performance, and video as her ways of expression. In her installations, she often uses colourful traditional Korean fabrics which are used for bed sheet for the newly wed couple in Korea. The act of "sewing" has very important meaning to her. Especially in Korea, "sewing" is a women's job and referred as a symbol of femininity. She said that she discovered the power of sewing when she was stitching a bed sheet with her grandmother in her childhood.* Now, as an artist, she travels all over the world, she consider herself as a needle, and she stitch through/together the people, society, and the world.
"Bottari" is one of Kimsooja's representing works. It is made of the Korean bed sheet wrapping the old cloths. In Korea, there is a traditional custom to wrap things when people move or arrange their personal belongings. She thinks that "bottari" contains people's memories and lives.** Another important idea behind her work is the relation of ying and yang. The two do not necessarily oppose to each other but complement. Her works with Korean fabric express many different forms of ying and yang such as man and woman, life and death, joy and sadness, and prosperity and decline.
Kimsooja's newest work "A Mirror Woman:The Sun & The Moon" is a video work which she shot the sun, the moon, and the ocean in Goa, India. The Sun and the moon and high and low tide would be the perfect examples of ying and yang relationship. Also the sun, the moon, and the ocean control all lives on the earth. This work is a dynamic piece deals with nature.
(*p84, **p85, Catalogue of Kimsooja "Journey Into The World" National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens 15.2-29.5,2006)
