Throughout the past forty years, Kimsooja’s conceptual practice has been dedicated to exploring the human condition through the awareness of self and others in search for a comprehensive totality. Her diverse practice combines performance, film, sculpture, photography, and site-specific installation using textiles, light, and sound to create a transcendent experience for the viewer. Rooted in the practice of sewing, Kimsooja’s seminal work A Needle Woman, positions her body as a symbolic needle, a motionless figure in the center of urban environments passing through the fabric of a place and its people. Metaphorically referring to the way the moving body weaves connections with new contexts and new situations, this concept reoccurs throughout Kimsooja’s practice. 

Often engaging with cultural signifiers, the bottari — a traditional Korean bed cover used to wrap and protect personal belongings — has become a central form in her practice. Representative of essential belongings and a nomadic lifestyle, the bottari is a memory of our own body, relating to the past, present, and future. Kimsooja extends the bottari concept to architectural spaces, transforming a room or building into a transcendental experience by wrapping and weaving light, sound, and reflection to inspire thoughtful introspection.