Kimsooja. Being in the World

The exhibition features two video works by Kimsooja: Alfa Beach (2001) from the Bottari series and A Laundry Woman — Yamuna River (2000). The artist of Korean origin evokes in an effective manner, with brilliant simplicity and lyricism, the relationship between the human body and nature, immobility and movement, life and death in images that are staged like a tableau vivant.

In A Laundry Woman — Yamuna River the artist is seen in the foreground, her back to the camera; she is an anonymous silhouette rooted in the centre of the image. No sound is to be heard; she stands erect before the sacred river Yamuna unchanged yet exposed to the passage of time. Her image becomes almost abstract as it dissolves into the serene strength of the current. Time has not been altered, but our perception of it has changed: we experience it like the artist, who stands immobile and hypnotized by the flow that carries with it, in its quiet rhythm, offerings and the shadow of birds that fly in an invisible sky.

Alfa Beach is a landscape where sea and sky have been reversed. This very stirring work, shot on a beach in Nigeria historically associated with the slave trade, sets up a contrast between a clear sky and the agitation of the waves, which stands as a metaphor for disorientation and the dramatic events that suddenly shattered the reality of those who have been uprooted from their world and deprived of their points of reference.

Kimsooja was born in Korea in 1957. Since 1999, she has been living and working in New York City. Kimsooja enjoys international recognition and her works are regularly exhibited in many venues across the world. The MAJ is proud to be the first to host an exhibition of her work in Québec.

Kim Sooja
Being in the World
Kuratorin: Gaetane Verna