- Title
- A Needle Woman, Patan (Nepal), Havana (Cuba), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), N'Djamena (Chad), Sana'a (Yemen), Jerusalem (Israel)
- Date Made
- 2005
- Medium
- (Six) channel video installation, silent (00:10:40) loop
- Accession Number
- M.2011.64.1-.4
- Curatorial Notes
“Being overwhelmed by humanities from each of the cities standing still as a symbolic needle, I felt a strong connection with my body and mind full of compassion to the world. . . . By doing nothing but being a presence, while creating [a] void of my identity, I wish to reveal the human conditions in existential, geocultural and sociopolitical dimension in this ‘A Needle Woman’ performance video.”
A Needle Woman combines Kimsooja’s early sewing practice with the site-specific video and performance work she began to produce in the 1990s. In this series of slow, poetic videos, the artist acts as a needle, inserting herself into the hustle and bustle of life in six international cities. As if immobile, she stands in the middle of six busy walkways, allowing a river of passersby to flow around her. These disparate places, from Asia to Africa to the Americas, were united in one key way: at the time of filming, each city was fraught with conflict.
Susie Ferrell
2025
- Copyright
- © Kimsooja/Artists Rights Society, New York, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA, by Charlie Powers
