First exhibited in a different configuration at the Palais Rameau, Lille, 2003, Courtesy Dijon Consortium

Installation view at Kimsooja, Mumbai: A Laundry Field, Continua Gallery, Le Moulin, France 2009

The House Project presents an abandoned house in Laukvik, Lofoten Island, Norway as an object in itself, and a platform for multiple related interactive practices. Initially, the artist collaborated with the Loften International Art Festival (LIAF) to purchase an isolated and abandoned house in Lofoten, with the idea that it would be documented, and then renovated into a retreat/residency space.


The house appears to have been abandoned suddenly by its inhabitant, an older fisherman's wife, forty years ago. It has been left with furniture, full of personal objects, memories, and history. After the visiting the house, and discovering this rich personal history embedded within the house and its many contents, the artist decided to keep it as it is. She altered her idea instead to invite people to stay in a nearby guesthouse for the residency, keeping the house as a sanctuary, and as an object.


The artist has been documenting the house in both photographs and video, in every season, and hopes to realize this project as a book project in the end. She also plans to invite writers, artists, musicians, architects, and choreographers to come stay together in the area, and to create a site specific dialogue in relation to the house and its location. This may offer an opportunity of focused contemplation of art works and processes, the place and its surrounding environment.


The project aims, thus, to allow for continuity in the artist's engagement with, and non-intrusive contribution, to the local environment, retaining the mystery of the occupants disappearance, while their stories remain intact.

This project was possible with the generous support of Shiseido Co., Ltd.


This landscape image is drawn from a video work Kimsooja filmed on the coast of Goa in India. The rising and setting of the sun and the moon, their constant motion in concert with the ocean tide, demonstrate the balance and interdependent cycle of nature. When the artist saw the two opposing celestial bodies at the same time she superimposed the two, allowing for their synchronous alignment to eclipses the reality as we know it. The spheres shaped by earth, water, and human hands resonate with the cosmic orbit of the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun.


이 풍경 이미지는 김수자가 인도 고아 해안에서 촬영한 영상 작업에서 가져온 것이다. 태양과 달의 상승과 하강, 그리고 조수(潮水)와 더불어 이루어지는 그들의 끊임없는 운동은 자연이 이루어내는 균형과 상호의존적 순환을 보여준다. 작가는 서로 반대 방향에 위치한 두 천체가 동시에 보이는 순간을 목격하고 이 두 이미지를 겹쳐 배치함으로써 우리가 알고 있는 현실의 질서를 잠시 가리는, 동시적인 정렬의 순간을 작품화하였다. 흙과 물, 그리고 인간의 손에 의해 형성된 이 구체는 지구·달·태양이 이루는 우주적 궤도와 공명한다. 이는 자연과 인간, 물질과 우주의 관계를 사유하도록 이끄는 조형적 은유이자 김수자 작업의 핵심 주제인 순환·호흡·존재의 본질을 다시금 일깨운다.