Kimsooja, Thread Routes, Chapter lll

Thread Routes - Chapter lll (2010–) is the third installment of the six-chapter film series produced by multidisciplinary conceptual artist Kimsooja (°1957, Daegu, Korea). The films were shot in different continents and reveal the artist gazing at the intimate link between each region’s textile culture and its people, gender relations, architecture, nature and agriculture. These non-narrative films invite the viewer into a realm that explores the boundaries of poetry and visual anthropology.

Thread Routes - Chapter lll was filmed in India in 2012. It features traditional dyeing, knitting, embroidery, block printing, and tattooing; the archeological sites and the temporary dwellings belonging to nomadic communities in the state of Gujarat; as well as two landmarks of Indian architecture: the Queen’s Stepwell and the Modhera Sun Temple, near the city of Ahmedabad.

For this exhibition at Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Kimsooja has collected the under layers of the block print tables where Indian workers have repeatedly stamped patterns of indigo ink. These textiles bear the marks of repetitive labor and their patterns exposing an intricate layer of ink that ties to the artist’s early experiments with painting. The intimate relationship between these acts of labor and the patterns of the fabrics parallels the carved stones of archeological sites filmed in Thread Routes - Chapter lll, and also recall Kimsooja’s previous laundry installations and film-work shot in Mumbai called “Mumbai: A Laundry Field.” The sound track of the film’s protagonists in the act of printing and stamping echoes throughout the installation, where the light data of the film is digitally woven in a new experimental video piece composed of spectral lightwaves.

Thread Routes reveals how the artist gazes at the world: unfolding visual patterns that intimately tie humans to their land. Kimsooja investigates questions relating to the human condition such as nomadism, migration, interpersonal relationships, and women’s role in society. She also engages her audience with a reflection on the relations of aesthetics and global politics through a system of beliefs that defies mobility and the act of making. All these themes are present in her multidisciplinary art practice, which includes performance, video, photography, drawing, sculpture, and site-specific installations, that are all linked towards their relational use of light and sound.