• Bottari is the traditional wrapping cloth of Korea. Bottari, or bundle, has had many uses. Traditionally made by women of all classes of society, they were used to cover food and store things, wrap clothing, move house, or for sending as gifts and other precious items. One translation of bottari is 'wrapping luggage with a wrapping cloth'. Such cloths may be embroidered, painted, made from oiled paper, patchwork, or just plain cloth. The most popular wrapping cloths used patchwork designs, and were made from small pieces of discarded scraps. Similar to the practice of quilting, these bottaris were made by stitching patches of bright cloth onto the surface of a blanket. A simple sheet could be transformed into a colourful blanket, and later used as a bed cover. Kimsooja is a Korean artist who has deliberately chosen to work with the meanings and traditions of bottari made by ordinary people, so as to create new works of art. As the artist related to me in my interview with her:

• 'As a medium, bottari is traditionally feminine. In Korean, the expression to 'bundle up a bottari' means that a woman has lost her status in the household and has been forced out. Bottari also has significance as a container, or vessel, for carrying and transporting all sorts of goods. It can be unwrapped just as it can be bundled up, and in this regard I see our body as being, in the subtlest kind of way, a kind of bottari'. [1]

• In this essay, I will discuss some of the ways in which Kimsooja has used bottaris in her work, and also touch on some feminist elements that are implicated in her practice. My discussion can be viewed within the context and transformations that have taken place in her work since the 1980s.

• Korean women are taught from an early age to sew and develop needlework skills. Consequently, making wrapping cloths can never be separated from women's everyday life, just as the blankets and bedclothes they make are indispensable objects in daily use. As such, bottaris hold a special place for 'conveying buried memories and pain, as well as life's quiet passions'. [2] Blankets and bedclothes offer a place for rest when one is tired. As humans, we are born on a blanket and die in one. Cloth protects and decorates: it is an essential element of life. The blanket is a site for human life and a place of its joy, anger, grief and pleasure. In Korea, traditional folk belief suggests that good luck and happiness can be preserved inside the cloth. The patterns on the blanket are ornaments and symbols that encompass our aspirations, such as fertility, health and longevity. The colours also have symbolic meaning. [3]

• As I have already mentioned, Kimsooja is an artist who has visually and consciously combined tradition with contemporary art in an effective way. In my view, many contemporary artists have tried to offer new ways of working with conventional materials and concepts, whilst still retaining their traditional distinctive character, but I think none have been as successful as Kimsooja. In many works, women artists refer to the traditional labour associated with sewing and material. They introduce craft skills such as quilting and knitting into their work, and these elements have often referred to their individual lives and memories. This approach has been associated with tendencies in feminist art, but I do not think I would define Kimsooja simply as a feminist artist, although feminist traits can be found in her work.

The Works Prior to Bottari

• Kimsooja graduated from an art college and graduate school in Korea in the 1970s. At that time, 'monochrome' was the dominant form of art, along with other styles and experiments. During her studies, Kim was mainly influenced by formalism and conceptual art and, keeping these various trends of modern art in mind, her conceptual work was initially concerned with questions of 'the surface'. Although she experimented with various styles and expressions, she struggled to expand her vision and find her voice. In 1983, an incident occurred which had a new and lasting influence on her work. While sewing a blanket with her mother, Kim gained a new insight into cloth. She experienced a feeling of complete immersion in the realm of infinity. This experience led her to experiment with cloth and its surface, and resulted in a two dimensional work which she has described as follows:

• 'In the midst of a common act of sewing blankets with my mother, I had a clandestine and surprising experience in which all of my senses, thoughts and activities all coincided with one another. In this experience, I discovered the possibility that so many memories, pains and affection of life buried unnoticed so far could be connoted in it. I was totally fascinated by the lines of longitude and latitude as the basic structure of cloth; its primordial colour; the feeling of identity between the cloth and me while it was being sewn; and the curious nostalgia evoked by those things'. [4]

• While sewing blankets, Kim found a new possibility of overcoming the limits of the two dimensional surface through the process of moving the needle above and beneath the cloth, and began to use this experience in her work. Such works were significant in that they connected women's everyday life to artwork through the use of the material of cloth and the activity of sewing. Many Korean women artists use 'sewing' in their work, while others reference the human body. Kimsooja's early works use sewing as representative of these early ideas about women's work and labour. More recently, she has consciously used the body:

• 'I regard bottari as the body itself. Like bottari, which can be bundled and unwrapped, the presence of the body lingers and departs. The cloth, in my view, is like our skin'. [5]

• For me, her sewing works evoke a sense of femininity, labour and healing. However, there is also a difference between Kimsooja's early work and many other feminist art forms, since she uses fabric as a canvas, which is a surface. In addition, she uses needlework as a tool, which asks endless questions on this border of surface, trying to identify the subject and the object.

• In the 1980s, many Korean artists began to escape from the formalist, minimal monochrome art of the 1970s and related their works to social issues. They began to treat reality as a basis for a critical practice that represented social and political ideas. These practices presented a resistance to existing art activities and to the social system. The Minjoong Art movement was established by a number of Korean artists who shared these ideals. [6]

• As a consequence many artists turned their backs on the individualistic works of the 1970s and began to deal with real life, to develop a critical vision about their society and its politics. One of the great influences of Minjoong Art was that it made people think about art in terms of communication. Kimsooja's introduction of everyday life into her practice through sewing processes can be seen as a result of this influence. But she never joined the group, since she did not agree with group activism and the fixed ideas, systems and power it holds over the individual. She continued to work on pieces in which canvas and painting were replaced by cloth and sewing. Such works can be described as modernist, in that the work of sewing and cloth was done within the two dimensional surface.

• The act of sewing necessarily accompanies the material of cloth. The action is repeated across the surface above and beneath. Kim attempted to overcome the limitations of the 'surface' through repetitive horizontal and vertical stitching. Paints were applied over the colours and patterns of the cloth with brush strokes, line drawings and stitched marks. These showed the variation of space. The action of sewing enabled the artist to interact with the material of cloth. In sewing, Kim engages with the surface, simultaneously extending the space. I think that the introduction of cloth and sewing into her artwork brings the realm of the feminine into the art world, and overcomes the exclusion of ideas and practices that were prevented by modernism in a Confucian society. Kim seeks to transcend gender difference and to celebrate the universal value of the human being.

• Kim also produced collage works that used cloth and needle instead of canvas and paint. Although she added drawing or paint to the cloth in "Dans Ma Chambre" (1988), the cloth work still sticks to the square surface.

• Since the early 1990s, Kim has wrapped her objects, using the title "Deductive Object". In such works, Kim wrapped the cloth or hung it around common objects such as farming tools, sticks, ladders and laundry bars.

• These works were significant in that Kim attempted to escape materiality and the frame imposed upon it by the painting. She still called these attempts 'deductive' because she wanted to get out of her earlier inductive works, in which materials were assembled and connected by sewing. Deductive works reconfirm the structure of the object through the activity of wrapping it. As Kim has observed:

• 'With my objects, it's as though I'm bandaging a wound. I wrap the object as if I was treating a wound, and through the wrapping and bandaging, the objects are transformed into something feminine'. [7]

• The two dimensional frame of painting was left behind. A freer placement of shapes and objects on the wall was now possible. As the critic Oh Kwang Soo remarked:

• 'Even though there still remains the concept of her early paintings that are hung on the wall, most of Kimsooja's works bear strong tendency toward three dimensionality. Although still wary of the wall, Kim's work is a world of painting turning its back on reality, out of the illusion and into the direct reality. Therefore, her works got out of the concept of painting or drawing and consisted of stitching, weaving or wrapping direct materials. In these works, Kim stresses the meaning of assemblage of things rather than just sewing them together, while her early works consisted of quilts'. [8]

• This commentary suggests that Kimsooja's work deals with the relationship between the cloth and the space in addition to revealing the cloth as cloth. Cloth has a number of purposes and meanings for people, whether as blankets or as clothes. Other than a visible meaning, an invisible meaning also exists within the cloth. Ancestors of the Korean people believed in transmigrations and the invisible spirit. For these ancestors, cloth is the best material to convey the spirit. I think that Kim evokes the immaterial through the materiality of cloth. Just as she had once experienced the feeling of unity with her mother through sewing together, Kim 'converses' with an invisible being through the medium of cloth.

• In her P.S.1 studio residency in America (1992 and 1993), a series of works stretched the limits of merely experimenting with Korean material. This can be seen in one of the Deductive Object pieces made in 1993. Kim collected a large amount of cloth and transformed it into assemblages. These moved from the form of painting stuck inside the square frame to the three-dimensional form of the object, and then into space.

• "Mind and the World" illustrates this gradual development. In this oval shaped work, a pile of cloth was attached and stacked to the wall. Bamboo was connected to the pieces on the floor and on the wall. Different clothes were arranged in an oval shape and placed on the wall. Pieces of bamboo were wrapped with cloth as a supporting element. The use of bamboo reminds me of a needle form. In earlier works, this needle form was only visible as the trace of a thread it left behind, but in Mind and the World, the needle takes on multiple meanings. It connects the work and the earth, the artist's and the viewer's mind. The original function of a needle is to connect patches of cloth, but Kim uses it as a vertical force in horizontal space. All the works she made previously seem to converge, thereby establishing themselves as a new force. In my view, Mind and the World is a work of total harmony as it brings together all elements: assemblage, sewing and winding, shape and colour.

• Many "Deductive Object" works were produced and contributed to new installation practice. In the one made for the 5th Istanbul Biennale, entitled Deductive Object - dedicated to my marriage, patches of crushed cloth were pushed into the cracks of the wall in her studio, creating an autobiographical message through the use of traditional Korean clothes or cloth. For the first time, she completed a work by utilizing the whole space of her studio. Both the form of placement and the relationship between artwork and space was changed. America profoundly affected Kim's practice in several different ways. Firstly, she expanded the concept of space and secondly, bamboo stood in for the structural qualities and metaphoric possibilities of a needle form.

Bottari

• The bottari reappeared, as Kim noted:

• 'The bottari has always been around us. The bottari was in my studio even before I worked on it. I just did not notice it. Then, when I happened to turn my face accidentally in the P.S.1 studio, the bottari was there. I myself did not notice the patches of cloth wrapped in a bottari that I had intended to use for cloth work. That bottari was a totally new one. It was surely a sculpture and a painting'. [9]

• Having abandoned the idea of placing cloth only within a frame, Kim wrapped a variety of objects, placing them on the floor and the wall. Although similar to the artist Christo in terms of the action of wrapping, Kim's wrapping work stresses the connection with everyday experience.

• The bottari was defined as crossing the boundary between painting and sculpture. Kim's work was no longer a matter of form and composition but began to unfold in a different dimension, in much the same way Marcel Duchamp could no longer be a futurist painter after inventing the readymade. Bottari, however, is an ambiguous object that cannot be construed simply as a readymade. Unlike the transformation of industrial products, such as bicycle wheels or toilets, into works of art as a result of the artist's choice, signature and exhibition, there is no boundary between the bottari as a work of art and as a common object. [10]

The Essence of Bottari

• The common function of bottari is twofold. They are used for official functions and ceremonies, and by ordinary people to store, wrap, and carry things when on the move. Kimsooja's bottari works embrace the activity of wrapping as a sign of being on the move, as well as functioning as a 'real' bottari containing patches of cloth. The bottari in this context occupies an ambiguous position between life and art.

• The bottari installed in a villa, contemporary gallery, museum, or outside in the world takes on very different meanings (see colour plate 9). The bottari is temporal in character. It is tied with bedclothes, but inside there are used clothes. Clothes contain individual memories, stains and smells, and the artist's experience, and exist as a part of the body. In human life, clothes have dual aspects of protection. They protect us from the cold and danger, and signify the wearer's taste. The activity of wrapping up clothes into a bottari can be interpreted in many ways. To wrap up means protection and confinement at the same time. The confinement signifies severance from the outside world. To wrap up also signifies a women's status in Korean society. As if wrapped up, Korean women are confined in the name of protection. The artist sees these blankets and bedclothes as places on which we are born and die, a foundational field which is the frame of our lives. To women, a blanket is a comfortable resting place during the night, while being related to the bed in a sexual sense as well. Women give birth to children on a blanket. Thus, it is a space where women continue human history. The blanket was also a symbol of oppression by Confucian morals and strict social ideology during the Chosun Dynasty (1392 - 1910). Within a social hierarchy that privileged men, women found pleasure and emotional survival through their needlework. Sewing was one of the few accepted activities that they could do. In a society in which the expression of colour was prohibited, Korean women used colour to decorate their blankets and bedclothes, and communicate their hope. At a time when bright colours were not allowed in ordinary life, the blanket could be as brilliant in colour as the women liked.

• In her more recent work, Kimsooja allows bedclothes and blankets to take on a meaning of 'invitation'. By spreading a blanket across a table in a public restaurant, Kim's work quietly sneaks into the ordinary life of people eating and talking, outside the confines of a domestic interior. To place a bedcover on an eating table can be read as an attack on traditional custom. In Confucian society, men and women eating together in public was strictly taboo. They lived in separate quarters and the kitchen was located within the women's area. In Kim's 'used bedcover' work, the blanket acts as a sign of resistance against this convention. In this respect, I think Kimsooja is an example of an artist who questions convention and, by doing so, reveals the expressive power of an ordinary object such as bottari. I believe that Kim's life experience is accurately represented in the bottari. The conservative Confucian tradition, which influenced her youth, finds expression in her work. In the shade of men, Korean women are like shadows without existence. Women are responsible for domestic economy and Kim's work evokes something for me about middle aged women, (rather than women in general), and the renunciation of femininity. In other words, women appear as maternal beings who embrace and cure everything. Now the bottari no longer stays in a gallery environment, but is moved onto the top of a truck, into nature or becomes a shrine. In A Laundry Field, Sewing into Walking, Looking into Sewing, Kim hung bedcovers with laundry clips as if hanging real laundry. This bedcover installation occupied the whole space, and could be viewed from various angles. The work was used as a stage ornament for a dance performance. [11]

Video Works

• Bedcovers and bottari are used as signs of a metaphorical and literal journey in Kimsooja's video works. In 1997, she traveled from Seoul through several other Korean cities, before returning again to Seoul. The journey took eleven days, and many bottari were loaded on the truck.

• In Cities on the Move - 2727 KM Bottari Truck, the meanings of 'migration' and 'origin' are extended, as Kim traveled and 'performed' around the whole country. The video made en route was shown in Cities on the Move, an exhibition organised by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hou Hanru. As I note from the title of the show, this whole curatorial project dealt with the topic of nomadism. Cities on the Move - 2727 KM Bottari Truck encapsulates two themes: the artist's memory of her early days when she had to move constantly (her father was a military man), and her current experience of traveling all over the world for artistic projects. This is a journey of body and soul together, and a journey into the memory and the past.

• Usually a journey is a movement between places, but Kimsooja's journey shows the travel of time through the transition of places. The vertical concept of time is added to Kim's journey so that the journey in general becomes a linear movement between places. A similar work was made for the Venice Bienniale in 1999. Kim's Bottari Truck is both a symbol for her journey to other cities and other worlds, and a comment on those displaced from their homelands. She identifies the bottari with herself. She faces herself in the front mirror of the truck, and confronts her past experiences. In all her video works, the identification with 'the journey into the other world' is constantly visualised.

• In a video piece that records a performance in Delhi, Kim ended her identification with the bottari and made herself a needle sewing the earth, that is, A Needle Woman. This work shows how Kim identifies herself with the needle (see colour plate 10). She conceptualises the activity of sewing. While considering this activity as 'breathing or communication', she identifies walking and staring with sewing. Mind and the World was the first work in which this concept of sewing was stressed. In Sewing into Walking, Kim herself is a needle, connecting the bedcovers on the ground with the earth. In her video works, Kim deploys used clothes, bottari and video monitors to connect the exhibition space and the viewers with the activity of sewing. The artist has said, 'previously thread and needle sewed cloth whereas this time my body is a medium that sews wide cloth that is nature'.

• As we can see in this remark, Kim's needlework has evolved from the actual activity of sewing into conceptual sewing, revealing the relationship of intertwining without thread and needle. The artist sews the common life, environment and nature with her own body. This action replaces the needle. A needle can also be a tool that hurts, but it can be also be a tool that cures, as in Oriental medicine.

• Kim is a needle that connects the body and the soul. Although the needle connects, it does not leave its trace. Kim herself becomes a needle to remove her own being. The responses of passersby are diverse: the pedestrians in Tokyo look totally disinterested; the occasionally looking back Chinese in Shanghai appear to be curious; and the Indians stop and stare at the artist. The artist is a needle that continues to sew her with passersby. In the repeated sewing, the artist disappears and nothing remains.

• In A Laundry Woman – Yamuna River, India, made in India in 2000, Kim's empty state of mind appears more emphasized. In one scene, Kim meets the souls, as the remains of a burnt dead body passes by in front of her in the Yamuna River. Kim's body is slowly assimilated into the river. She is free from all thoughts and ideas and goes into a different state of mind. As in all her video works, her activity is minimal. Many stories are condensed as her works change from the bottari to the needle and then to nature. Kim once sewed the world with her body as medium, but now she tells us another story with her eye and mind. As Rosalind Krauss has observed, the real medium of video art is not the mechanical apparatus but the psychical circumstance. In Kim's video work, one can feel the state of being nothing and experience the correspondence with nature without any skill. [12]

• In conclusion I believe that Kim positions her itinerary between life and death. She sees each sewing stitch as an endless itinerary. She is the needle that travels across the cloth. She once discovered this while sewing blankets with her mother, and then overcame the limitation of the two dimensional surface by sewing onto a blanket. In a progressive variation of bottari works, Kim developed the concept of journey or migration into Cities on the Move - 2727 KM Bottari Truck, then she evolved into A Needle Woman, and finally in her video works the needle is identified with the body. The thread has continuity and circularity. This aspect of continuity and circularity of life is apparent in her work. This also signifies transmigration in Buddhism.

• Kimsooja's journey is not over yet.

• 꽉 묶은 봇짐—객관적인 의미에서나 은유적인 의미에서나 '간직된' 어떤 것—은 바닥에 누워 있는 몸처럼 끌림과 호기심을 동시에 자극한다. 내용물을 감싼 천을 잡아주는 매듭을 손으로 쥐어보면 짐 꾸러미 안에 감추어진 것의 수수께끼, 즉 이 꾸러미와 그 기원에 관한 이야기가 드러날 듯하다. 그것은 아마도 통과의 이야기, 곧 출발과 여행 그리고 도착의 이야기일 것이다. 특히 이 짐 꾸러미는, 그것이 현실적 지칭이든 문학적 모티프든 상관없이, 거의 모든 사람의 의식 속에 깊이 닻을 내린 하나의 원형이다. 소설의 영웅이 단호히 각오를 다지며 '봇짐을 쌀' 때, 그것은 이야기의 흐름에서 극적인 전환점을 상징한다. 이처럼 겉보기에 단순한 짐이라는 형식은, 언제든 원래대로 되돌릴 수 있는 것으로서 열린 과정을 나타낸다. 그것은 다시 말해 다가올 것에 대한 복잡한 기대를 의미한다. 그것은 어떤 다른 삶-공간, 또는 삶-시간에서도 완벽히 기능할 수 있는, 삶의 응축물일 수 있다.

• 김수자는 1992년 이래 점점 더 다양한 맥락과 배치 속에서 선보여 온, 활기차게 밝은 색감과 풍성한 무늬의 천으로 감싼 짐 꾸러미를 ‘보따리(bottari)’로 명명한다. 김수자의 고국인 한국에서 최근 일어난 격변과 활기찬 재도약에도 불구하고, 천으로 싼 보따리는 예전과 마찬가지로 가족의 세간살이를 안전하게 보존하거나 운반하기 위한 평범한 용기로 사용되고 있다. 귀중품이나 가보는 보따리에 싸지 않는다. 보따리에는 다른 장소에서 새 출발을 할 때 꼭 필요한 가장 기본적인 가재도구를 싼다.

• 출발하는 것, 체류하는 것, 유목적으로 존재하는 것, 정주하는 것은 인간 삶의 주요한 범주이지만, 오늘날 우리가 이용하는 운송 수단은 우리를 빠르게 다른 곳으로 이동하도록 하여 우리로 하여금 이러한 범주를 이해하기 어렵게 만든다. 하지만 다른 곳에서는, 관광객조차도 세계일주라는 극도의 사치를 누리는 동안, 사람들은 끝없이 느리고 고된 여정에 나서야 한다. 우리는 지금 여행의 본성에 관해 고찰하고 있지만, 사실 보따리를 둘러싼 연상의 유희에 결정적인 영향을 미치는 것은 그 주변 공간의 구성 요소, 특히 바닥이다. 일반적인 갤러리의 중립적인 바닥과는 다른 표면, 그러니까 독일 하노버 시 스프렝겔 미술관(Sprengel Museum) 무제움플라츠(Museumplatz)의 바닥처럼—자갈길을 연상시키는—거칠고 불편한 표면을 마주하면, 우리는 자신의 소유물을 전부 직접 들고 걸어가야 하는 사람을 떠올리게 된다. 이어 우리는 정치적 또는 민족적 박해나 질병, 생태적 재난이나 경제적 몰락으로 인해 겨우 자신의 맨몸과 보따리 하나만을 간직한 채 이주를 강요당한 사람들을 생각하게 된다. 평범한 집기에서 예술 오브제로 승격되어 미술관에 놓인 김수자의 보따리는 불안 속에 저항하거나 불안을 안고 사는 사람, 국가가 없는 사람, 뿌리가 뽑힌 사람, 초대받지 않은 사람의 상징이며, 이방인 또는 외국인의 상징이다.

• 작가의 보따리 안에는 우리가 알지 못하는 수많은 사람이 입었던 옷가지가 담겨 있다. 그 옷은 한때 그것을 입고 있었던 사람의 대신하는 대상이 된다. 그들은 소설에 등장하는 용감한 영웅과는 거리가 멀다. 김수자는 그동안의 발언을 통해 보건대, 다른 사람들의 삶의 방식에 깊게 공감하는 데에 탁월한 역량을 보여주었고, 특히 "우리 사회의 영웅주의, 위계질서, 궁핍, 경직된 사고, 차별, 무지, 거짓에 희생된 익명의 피해자들"에게 연민을 표현한 바 있다. [아티스트 북 『떠도는 도시들(Cities on the Move)』"을 준비하며 1998년 한스-울리히 오브리스트(Hans-Ulrich Obrist)에게 보낸 이메일과 2001년 쿤스트할레 베른(Kunsthalle Bern) 전시 도록에서]. 이때 김수자는 의심의 여지 없이 자신의 조국인 한국의 지난 역사를 생각했을 것이다. 나아가 그는 운반 가능한 보따리를 통해 우리로 하여금 움직임과 의식, 지식, 시간과 공간 사이의 연결에 대해 성찰하도록 이끈다. 이렇게 피난과 이주라는 존재론적 주제와의 연결 속에서, 자유와 강제라는 질문이 제기된다.

• 1997년, 가족의 끊임없는 이주 경험으로부터 깊은 영향을 받은 김수자는 트럭 짐칸에 보따리를 산처럼 쌓고 줄로 단단히 고정한 채 조국을 횡단했다. 이 11일간의 여행-퍼포먼스 〈떠도는 도시들—2,727km 보따리 트럭 (Cities on the Move—2,727 Kilometers by Bottari-Truck)〉는 비디오 작품으로 남겨졌다다. 작품에서 김수자는 보따리 산에 올라 앉아 이동하는 방향을 응시하고, 우리에게는 오직 뒷모습만을 보여준다. 이동하는 트럭을 카메라가 항상 같은 거리에서 따라가는 동안, 실제로 움직이는 것은 여행자임에도 불구하고, 여행자는 움직이지 않고 풍경이 움직이는 것 같은 인상을 받게 된다. 소리가 추가된 버전에서 관객은 트럭이 지나가는 지역의 명칭을 거의 낭송하는 작가의 음성을 들을 수 있다. 그러나 이 여정의 시작과 끝, 목적지에 관한 질문은 우리가 영상을 보면 볼수록 점차 희미해진다. 여행은 '어떤 곳'와 '모든 곳'(Somewhere and Everywhere)을 통과하는 여정이 된다. 흘러가는 풍경에 대한 세밀했던 지각은 점차 필터가 끼워진 듯 몽롱한 지각으로 바뀌는데, 어쩌면 바로 이것이 여행의 중독적 잠재력을 이루는 것인지도 모른다. 아마도 여행 특유의 이러한 몽롱함은 일반적으로 움직이지 않는 듯 보이는 어떤 것의 불안한 움직임에 대처하는 보호막일지 모른다. 이로써 여행자는 자기 자신의 내면, 그리고 이제는 자유로워진 사유의 흐름에 집중할 수 있게 된다.

• 정확히 김수자는 고전적으로 여성적인 것으로 간주되는 재료인 천이나 옷을 사용함으로써 여성의 역할에 대해 질문을 제기하고 있다. 전통적으로 여성은 ‘이동’의 개념에 대립하는 사람, 즉 가정과 '돌봄'의 범주에 속하는 존재로 분류되어왔다. 작가가 활용한 이불보는 앞서 누군가가 사용한 것으로, 한국 여성들이 가족을 위해 직접 바느질한 것이다. 서구 문화에서 사회화된 관객은 이 이불보의 무늬와 색깔, 구도에 어떤 특별한 의미가 있으리라고 짐작만 할 뿐이다. 이 이불보는 한 인간, 한 커플, 한 가족의 생애 주기에 동행하면서 사랑을 나누는 장소, 잠들고 꿈꾸는 장소, 목격의 장소이자 출산과 고통 그리고 죽음의 장소인 그들의 침상을 장식한다.

• 결과적으로, 이 둥근 보따리는 한번 만져보고 싶은 충동을 자극하기는 하지만, 처음에는 강렬한 육체성이나 친밀성의 분위기를 풍기지는 않는다. 하지만 천과 같이 부드럽고 매끄러우며 달라붙는 소재와의 접촉은 그 자체로 신체성과 연관이 있으며 천의 확장적 움직임과 연결된다. 아프리카 속담처럼 우리는 한 손으로는 보따리를 쌀 수 없다. 우리는 천을 펼쳤다 거두고, 털어서 걸고, 펴고, 개고, 덮고, 감고, 보따리로 싸고, 겹겹이 쌓는다. 이 모든 동작은 천을 다루는 오래된, 때로는 의례화된 방식이고 정확히 김수자는 이 동작을 자신의 예술 작업에 활용한다. 김수자가 보따리 천을 카페트처럼 바닥에 바로 깔든, 식탁보처럼 펼치든 그것은 초대의 제스처로 바뀐다. 설치미술 작품 <빨래터—바느질하며 걷기, 바라보며 바느질하기(A Laundry Field—Sewing into Walking, Looking Into Sewing)>(1997)에서 김수자가 천을 빨래줄에 널 때, 그는 전시에서 일상적 행위를 언급하고 있지만, 그것은 좀처럼 의식되지 않는 행위다. 사회적 인식과 차별에 대한 메타언어적 수준의 정보와 소통에 관해 알아가고자 한다면, 마당에서 매주 이루어지는 가정의 직물 전시만큼 적합한 것이 없다.

• 김수자는 천과 바늘 그리고 실을 다루는 일을 평범한 방식으로 수행하면서도 그것을 개념의 수준으로 끌어올린다. 그리하여 한국의 미술 대학에서 회화를 전공한 작가에게, 어머니와 함께 바느질을 한 일은 2차원적 캔버스를 넘어 오브제와 공간으로 나아가는 길을 그에게 제시한 최초의 경험으로만 그치지 않았다. 작가 자신과 그의 작품을 보는 관객 모두에게 깊고도 넓은 울림을 주는 하나의 관념은 작가 자신이 구상한 '바늘 여인'이라는 역할에서 그 모습을 선명하게 드러낸다—그것은 공간 내 상호작용으로서의 바느질이라는 관념, 새롭고 다소 불안정한 삶-공간을 끊임없이 구축해나가는 사회적 행위로서의 바느질이라는 관념이다. 이 관념에는 어떤 현혹의 분위기, 심지어 함정이 도사린 듯한 분위기가 있다. 우리가 우정의 유대를 단단히 하거나 새로운 관계의 그물을 짤 때 그러한 분위기가 감돌듯이 말이다. 김수자의 강박적인 여행은 그러한 그물을 직조하는 행위다. 왜냐하면 우리는 오직 움직일 때에만 유대와 분리를 또렷하게 지각할 수 있기 때문이다. 바로 이러한 방식으로 물질은 가까이 또는 멀리 있음을 느끼는 우리의 거리 감각에 영향을 준다. 김수자는 상하이, 도쿄, 뉴욕, 뉴델리 등 다양한 대도시에서 그를 지나쳐 흘러가는 행인을 마주하며 마치 시냇물의 바위처럼 거의 비현실적으로 경직된 자세로 가만히 서 있는 퍼포먼스를 반복했다. 작가의 등을 응시하며 김수자의 퍼포먼스가 담긴 비디오를 바라보는 관객은 또한 다양한 방식으로 반응하는 행인을 정면으로 바라보게 된다. 순간 김수자는 저 비가시적인 공간들을 건드린다. 그것은 모든 개인이 자기 자신을 설정하는 공간이고, 스스로 잘 깨닫지 못하는 행동 방침에 따라 움직이는 공간이다.

• 김수자에게 보따리는 "'자기만의 몸'이요, 하나의 자족적 세계다—하지만 그것은 물질적으로나 개념적으로 그릇처럼 무엇이든 담을 수 있는 어떤 것이다. 이는 우리가 보따리의 내용물이 밖으로 드러나지 않게 꽁꽁 묶을 수 있기 때문"이다[작가가 저자에게 보낸 2001년 이메일에서]. 미술관의 맥락에서, 일시적인 단위로 세심하게 만들어져 공간에 배치된 보따리는 관객으로 하여금 여행과 이주라는 구체적인 주제에 관해 숙고하게 한다. 수많은 보따리의 배치는 각 장소와 연관되어 있고, 따라서 그것은 매번 달라지는 가운데 여러 요소들이 통합된 전체적 구조를 창출한다. 그러나 각각의 개별 보따리 역시 수많은 부분으로 이루어진 통일체라 할 수 있다. 천 조각을 말고 펼치는 일상적 행위는 인간적 사유와 행동의 모든 영역, 그리고 우주와 자연의 모든 영역에 스미는 집중과 확산의 불가분한 상호작용을 상징하게 된다.

• 다른 맥락에서 군집, 응축, 타협의 한 가지 예로 보일 수 있는 보따리는 우리의 지식을 증대시키는 생성적 질서의 원칙이다. 보따리는 의심의 여지 없이 그 반대 방향의 운동인 '확장'과 떼려야 뗄 수 없는 관계에 있다. 따라서 고도로 압축되는 물질이나 에너지는 동시에 공간적 연장의 손실을 수반한다. 연장은 공간을 차지하지만, 그로 인해 힘과 장력을 잃는다. 이는 액체 속 성분의 농축에서도 뚜렷하게 보이듯이, 우리에게 잘 알려진 물리적 또는 화학적 현상이다. 만일 자연과학자가 사물과 현상을 하나로 묶고, 묶음의 개별 부분을 알지 못하고도 그에 대한 유효하고 유용한 법칙을 수립할 수 없다면, 오늘날 우리가 세상을 바라보는 방식은 상상도 할 수 없을 것이다. 인간 행동의 전략으로서, 방향성이 있는 행동은 보따리에 비견될 만하다. 방향성이 있는 행동은 널리 흩어진 이니셔티브와 충돌한다. 우리는 광범위한 주의력과 더불어 어떤 정서적 상태, 즉 내적으로 집중하는 능력을 타고 났다. 사고 과정은 긴 브레인스토밍이나 극도로 예리한 가설로 응결될 수 있다. 꾸러미, 즉 보따리로 묶는 것은, 지각과 정보와 생각을 일시적으로 유용한 복합 단위로 한데 모았다 다시 사물의 흐름 속으로 되돌려 보내는 인간의 능력이다. 우리는 오직 이 방식을 통해 무한한 풍요로움 속에서 개별적 현상의 방향을 설정할 수 있다.

• 보따리는 어디에나 있다—몸과 마음, 자궁과 무덤, 지구와 우주, 우리의 정신과 지형을 접고 펼치는 보따리의 보따리의 보따리, 시간과 공간......[아티스트 북 『떠도는 도시들』을 준비하며 1998년 한스-울리히 오브리스트에게 보낸 이메일과 2001년 쿤스트할레 베른 전시 도록에서]. 따라서 김수자의 보따리 개념은 단순히 어디에나 존재하는 이동성의 현상 위에, 강렬하고 감각적으로 인지 가능한 신체의 비유를 겹쳐놓은 것에 그치지 않고, 아시아와 서양 문화, 일상과 예술, 과거와 현재가 얽혀 있는 순간에 서로 연결되어 있다. 이러한 정신적 여정 속에서 작가는 마침내 '보따리' 모티프와 '행성' 모티프의 상호 침투까지 생각해내기에 이르렀다. 작가에게 각각의 보따리는 어떤 의미에서 "이를테면 수성, 금성, 화성, 목성, 토성, 천왕성, 해왕성, 명왕성 등의 행성 같다— 다시 말해, 그것은 인간적 갈망의 다양한 성격을 시사하는, 우리의 운명을 알려주는 행운의 징표 같은 존재다" [작가가 저자에게 보낸 2001년 이메일에서].

• A tied bundle, something 'saved' in both the objective and metaphorical sense, arouses the same simultaneous attraction and curiosity as a body lying on the ground. To grasp the knot that holds the enveloping cloth together would reveal the enigma of what was concealed within, the story of the bundle and its origin. It is likely the story of a passage, a story of departure, travel, and arrival. Not least, the bundle, whether reference or literary motif, is an archetype deeply anchored in the consciousness of nearly everyone. When the hero of a novel resolutely girds himself, 'ties his bundle', it marks a dramatic turning point in the course of the story. The form of this putatively simple baggage, reversible at any moment, stands for an open process, a complex anticipation of what is to come. It can be a condensate of life, fully functional for some other life-space, or life-time.

• Kim Sooja designates the exuberantly bright and richly patterned cloth bundles she has been presenting in ever more varied contexts and constellations since 1992 as bottari, the Korean term for 'bundle'. Despite the recent upheavals and electrifying renewal in her South Korean homeland, tied bundles of cloth, as before, are used like ordinary containers for the safe-keeping or transportation of a family's worldly goods. They are not meant for a family's valuables or heirlooms, but for the most elementary household goods with which to make a start in another place.

• Getting under way, lingering, leading a nomadic existence, or settling are central categories of human life that the instantaneity of our present-day means of transportation allows us to barely comprehend. Elsewhere, alongside travel that affords even tourists the extreme luxury of a trip around the world, endlessly slow and arduous journeys are undertaken. Though reflecting on the nature of the journey, the play of associations around the bottari is decisively influenced by the composition of the surrounding space, especially the ground. Unlike the neutral floor of a gallery, a rough, inhospitable surface like that of the Museumplatz at the Sprengel Museum in the city of Hannover, Germany. reminiscent of cobblestones, leads one to think rather of those people who carry all their possessions with them on foot. It recalls the forced mobility of those who, because of political or ethnic persecution, illness, ecological disaster or financial ruin, were able to save only their skins, and a bundle. Promoted from implement to art-object and presented in a museum, Kim's bundles become symbols of the restive or restless, the stateless, uprooted, and uninvited, of the stranger or foreigner. Rolled up in the artist's bottari are the cast-off clothes of many people unknown to us.

• The pieces of clothing are stand-ins for the people whose second skin they once were. They have little to do with brave heroes in novels. Kim, whose comments display a perceptibly extraordinary capacity for empathizing with other people and their way of life, has herself expressed her compassion for "the anonymous victims of heroism, hierarchy, penury, rigid ideas, discrimination, ignorance and untruth in our society." [In a 1998 e-mail to curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist for Cities on the Move artist's book, and in the exhibition catalogue, Kunsthalle Bern, 2001.] Here she is no doubt thinking of the history of her own South Korean homeland. Furthermore, with her ambulatory, transportable bundles, she has succeeded in calling forth a reflection on the connection between movement and consciousness, knowledge, time and space. Thus linked to the existential themes of flight and migration, the question of freedom and coercion comes into play.

• In 1997, Kim, herself profoundly marked by the constant moving of her family, crossed her homeland in a truck to the bed of which she had lashed a mountain of her bottari. This 11-day travel-performance, Cities on the Move - 2727 Kilometers Bottari Truck, has been captured in several video works. They show Kim enthroned above her mountain of bundles, gazing in the direction of her movement, granting us only a view of her from the back. As the camera follows the moving truck, always from the same distance, relations seem to reverse: it is the traveler who strikes us as immobile within a landscape that in turn seems set in motion. A sound-version of Cities on the Move has a voice-over of the artist almost imploringly reciting the names of the places she passes through. Yet the question of the beginnings, end, and purpose of the journey increasingly fades the longer one views it. The trip becomes a journey through Somewhere and Everywhere. A detailed perception of the landscape flowing by gives way to a dazed one, as if some filter had been slipped in; this is what may constitute the addictive potential of traveling. Perhaps this daze, so typical of traveling, is protection against the troubling movement of something that generally appears immobile. It makes it possible to concentrate on one's own interiority and on the now freed stream of thought.

• It is precisely through the use of materials like cloth and clothing, classically denoted as female, that Kim raises the question of the role of woman. Traditionally, women have been the adversary of movement, that is, classified under domesticity and 'keeping'. The previously used bedcovers the artist uses are sewn by Korean women for their families. A viewer socialized in Western culture could only guess that their patterns, colors, and composition may have special meaning. Accompanying the life-cycle of a human being, a couple, or a family, they bedeck the bed as the place of love, of sleeping and dreaming, a place of witness, childbearing, suffering, and dying.

• Consequently, these rounded bundles, so tempting to the touch, do not at first evoke the impression of intense corporeality or intimacy. But contact with a soft, smooth, clinging material like cloth is itself body-related, connected to its extending motions. No one can tie a bundle with just one hand, in the words of an African proverb. To spread out and gather up, shake out and hang up, smooth out, crease, cover, wrap, arrange in bundles or piles — these are ancient, at times ritual, manners of handling cloth, and precisely the ones Kim employs in her art. Whether she places the bottari cloths directly on the ground like carpets or spreads them out like tablecloths, they turn into inviting gestures. When she hangs her cloths on a line, as in her installation A Laundry Field - Sewing into Walking, Looking Into Sewing (1997), she refers to an everyday behavior in exhibitions, but one which in itself is seldom conscious. Nothing is more suitable than a weekly domestic textile exhibition in the yard for initiating oneself into meta-linguistic levels of information and communication or social recognition and differentiation.

• Kim undertakes dealing with cloth, needle, and thread in an ordinary way, but raises it to the level of a concept. Thus, sewing along with her mother was not only an initiatory experience that showed the artist, who studied painting at the arts academy in Seoul, a way of going beyond the two-dimensional canvas to object and space. An idea, far-reaching both for herself and for the viewers of her work, manifests itself in her self-conceived role as 'A Needle Woman' — that of sewing as an interaction in space, sewing as a social behavior that endlessly constructs new and more or less unstable living-spaces. There is a beguiling, even entrapping note in this idea, as when we tighten the bonds of friendship or weave a web of relations. Kim's obsessive travels are the weaving of such a net, for only movement makes bonds and separation clearly perceptible. In just this way, materials influence our feelings of closeness and distance. In different metropolises like Shanghai, Tokyo, New York and New Delhi, she has repeated a performance where she stands with almost unreal rigidness facing passers-by who flow past her as if she were a rock in a stream. Gazing on the back of the artist, viewers watching a video of Kim's performance also look these people, who react in various ways, right in the face. For a moment Kim touches on those invisible spaces in which all individuals establish themselves, and in which they move according to a behavioral plan that is seldom intuited.

• For Kim, bottari are a 'body of her own', "a self-contained world — but one which can contain everything like a vessel, materially and conceptually, since one can tie up a bundle without revealing the contents." [The artist, in an e-mail to the author, 2001.] In a museum context, the bottaris, carefully fashioned into a temporary unit and arranged in the space, become a cause for reflecting on the concrete themes of travel and migration. The constellations of many bundles, site-related and thus different every time, create a unity of multiple elements. Yet each individual bundle is a unity that comprises numerous parts. An everyday act, rolling up and spreading out squares of cloth, comes to symbolize the inextricable interplay of concentration and diffusion that permeates every sphere of human thought and action, and of the cosmos and nature.

• The bundle, which in other contexts appears to be an example of clustering, condensing, and compromising, is a generative ordering principle that augments our knowledge. It is no doubt indissociable from its contrary movement, that of expansion. Thus, matter or energy highly compressed entails a simultaneous loss of spatial extension. Extensions take up space, but thereby lose strength and tensility. This is well known as a physical or chemical phenomenon, as in the concentrations of ingredients in liquids. Our present-day view of the world would be unthinkable if natural scientists were unable to tie together bundles of objects and phenomena, and to formulate valid and useful laws about them, without having to know the individual parts of those bundles. As a strategy for human behavior, a directed action is comparable to a bundle. It conflicts with widely scattered initiatives. We are endowed with an emotional state, the capacity for inner concentration, along with a wide-ranging attention. Thought-processes may precipitate as long brainstorms or intensely pointed hypotheses. Bundling is the human ability to bring together perceptions, information, and thought into momentarily useful complex units, then to return them back into the flow of things. Only in this way is orientation within the infinite plenitude of individual phenomena possible for us.

• Bottari is everywhere, body and mind, womb and tomb, globe and universe, bundle of a bundle of bundle folding and unfolding our mind and geography, time and space... [In a 1998 e-mail to curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist for Cities on the Move artist's book, and in the exhibition catalogue, Kunsthalle Bern, 2001.] So in Kim's concept of bottari there is not merely the superposition of an intense, sensually perceptible metaphorics of the body onto the all-pervasive phenomenon of mobility. It is interwoven with moments of Asian and Western culture, the everyday and art, past and present. On this mental voyage the artist herself has even managed to think up an interpenetration of the motifs of 'bundle' and 'planet'. For her, each bundle is in a certain sense "like a planet, for example, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto — like the lucky sign of our destiny which indicates the differing character of human longing." [The artist, in an e-mail to the author, 2001.]