Taking inspiration from a line in Yoko Ono’s 1964 publication Grapefruit, “A dream you dream alone may be a dream, but a dream two people dream together is a reality,” the title of the Triennial, “We Do Not Dream Alone,” attests to the power of art to resist our urge to silo during these uncertain times. Grapefruit, now considered a masterpiece of conceptual art, contains a series of “event scores” that provide instructions for simple, even daily actions the reader might enact as a way of life. These suggest the possibility of the efficacy of micro-actions and human agency, of particular resonance now when governments and public institutions seem to fail us.

Kimsooja presents To Breathe - The Flags (2012) video, where 246 national flags are mixed together to make a seamless and nonhierarchical cycle of images that cross-pollinate visual symbols of sovereignty and nationhood as a means to subvert the rigidity of borders and national identity.

(Left to right:)

01 - 06: Kimsooja, To Breathe - The Flags, 2012. Single-channel video. Duration: 40 minutes, 41 seconds. Installation view of Asia Society Triennial: “We Do Not Dream Alone” at Asia Society Museum, New York, October 27, 2020–June 27, 2021. Photos by: Bruce M. White, 2020, courtesy of Asia Society