Screening Room: Kimsooja
The sixth chapter of Screening Rooms presents a selection of works by internationally acclaimed conceptual multi-disciplinary South Korean artist Kimsooja. Having always identified nomadism as an unavoidable condition of contemporary being, the artist draws on her continuous movements as an indispensable source of material for the creation of her works across video, performance, installation, sculpture, and photography.
The video To Breathe – The Flags (2012) reflects on a transnational state of identity, merging two hundred forty-six national flags as indistinguishable cross-pollinating visual symbols: their purported intents—as symbols of state sovereignty and nationhood— are emptied and reconfigured by layering and cross-fading. As the images are semi-transparent, the colors and designs of multiple flags are intermixed, resulting in a visual and symbolic breakdown of hierarchies, and transcendence of boundaries blurring the distinctions between different countries.
Single Channel Video
40' 41" loop, silent
Courtesy of Art Front Gallery Co., Ltd. and Kimsooja Studio. Photo by Keizo Kioku.
To Breathe – The Flags includes flags from nations that are not internationally recognized, such as Scotland or Tibet, as well as nations whose flags are forbidden in other countries, such as North Korea. In merging the flags without restriction, the work provides a representation of the new nations or non-nations within its compressed layers, briefly dissolving their discrepancies and blurring their national identities. In the first iteration of this work, which was commissioned by the IOC Olympic Museum for the London 2012 Summer Olympics, the artist layered flags of all the participating countries in a reflection of the unifying spirit of the games.
Site specific installation for solo show at Galleria Raffaella Cortese
12 nylon flags; 243 × 152 cm each
Sourcing from the imagery of To Breathe – The Flags, Kimsooja envisions an installation visitors can walk through and inhabit. In To Breathe – Zone of Nowhere (2018), twelve moving flags, depicting film stills of overlaying flags, hang from the ceiling, as if they were also interweaving between and beyond the national boundaries. The visitor, moving across the gallery, constantly shifts their own point of view: once again Kimsooja’s work shows a commitment to engage with the audience and inspire solidarity and respect for the diversity of viewpoints.
To Breathe – Zone of Nowhere exists in a multi-form installation, where the number of flags adapts to the space: it has been installed in 2018 at PICA Perth Institute of Contemporary Art and as an outdoor installation at Traversées \ Kimsooja in Poitiers. The work’s effect transforms the ubiquitous national symbol of the flag into a more tentative object, one that is provisional and fluid, without hierarchy or political bias, putting all nations on the same level: a visual experience in which differences and conflicts between nations can fuse and blend together as one.
Courtesy of City of Poitiers, Galleria Raffaella Cortese and Kimsooja Studio. Photo by Yann Gachet, City of Poitiers.
I see myself as a completely independent person, independent from any belief, country, or religious background. I want to stand as a free individual who is open to the world.
– Kimsooja
Digital Flex print Sandwich mounted
102 × 75 cm (each)
Dyptich
