Kimsooja and the woven threads of her work series

From the AD HOC NEWS Art Desk » Work Series & Retrospective Desk - The editors cover exhibitions, auctions, collections, prizes and artistic positions. Published: June 27, 2026 · Last checked: June 27, 2026, 10:19 PM

Kimsooja has, over several decades, built a distinctly recognizable practice around textiles, migration and the motif of the bottari bundle. Her long-term work series and installations have entered major museums and biennials, giving this Korean conceptual and performance artist a sustained international presence.

The bottari bundles as core motif

The best-known strand in Kimsooja's practice is the use of bottari, traditional Korean fabric bundles that carry personal belongings and stories across borders and generations. She began to focus on these bundles in the early 1990s, wrapping household objects and even entire architectural spaces.

In works such as Deductive Object and later bottari installations, she uses secondhand bedcovers and clothing to embody displacement and memory, transforming everyday textiles into sculptural volumes. The bundles mark both departure and arrival, making the work legible far beyond Korea.

The long durational piece A Needle Woman

Another central work series is A Needle Woman, first realized in the late 1990s, in which Kimsooja stands silently, seen from behind, within crowded urban flows in cities around the world. Her still body becomes a needle that metaphorically stitches together diverse social fabrics.

This video series has appeared in different iterations, filmed in locations including Tokyo, Lagos, New York and Jerusalem, tracing global movement and difference through a constant, minimal action. The durational stillness is as important as the travel; the work insists on attention and contemplation rather than spectacle.

Retrospective trajectories and key exhibitions

Over time, the bottari and durational performance strands have been brought together in large museum shows. In 2013, the Korean Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale was dedicated entirely to Kimsooja, presenting installations and video works under the title To Breathe: Bottari.

The pavilion emphasized her integration of textiles, light and architecture, including a mirrored floor and colored filters over the windows that turned the national pavilion itself into a breathing body. This major appearance cemented her position in the biennial circuit.

Major European museums have followed with focused exhibitions and installations. Tate Modern in London has presented her work in collection displays, highlighting the bottari pieces as part of a broader narrative on global contemporary art. Other institutions, including the Guggenheim Bilbao, have invited site-specific interventions.

These projects often involve covering floors or façades with fabrics or reflective surfaces, as in To Breathe installations that convert monumental architecture into a kind of textile and optical field. The repeated title signals a single evolving body of work rather than isolated commissions.

Textiles, migration and conceptual structure

Across these series, Kimsooja uses humble materials - mostly used bedding and garments - with a conceptual rigor that aligns her practice with international conceptual art while remaining rooted in Korean daily life. The bottari bundles speak to migration within and beyond the Korean peninsula.

Her performances and videos add a temporal axis. Standing still in A Needle Woman or lying under a bottari blanket, she tests endurance and the viewer's attention span. The reduced gestures make room for viewers to project their own histories onto the fabrics and urban scenes.

How the artist constructs her installations

Kimsooja primarily works in installation, video and performance, collaborating closely with architects and institutions to adapt her bottari and To Breathe concepts to each site. She often covers existing structures rather than building new ones, underscoring transformation over monumentality.

The artist maintains a practice that circulates between Korea and international exhibition centers, using consistent motifs to build a cumulative body of work rather than pursuing rapid stylistic changes. This coherence makes her oeuvre particularly legible for curators and collectors.

Where the artist stands now

Kimsooja continues to deepen her established work groups, with current attention focused on institutional presentations of bottari installations and video performances rather than on new formats or publicly announced short-term events.

This article was produced with a.i. support and editorially reviewed. All statements without guarantee; auction results, exhibition dates and awards may change at short notice.