A Needle Woman is a performance video artwork created by artist

Kimsooja Kimsooja (; born 1957) is a South Korean, multi-disciplinary conceptual artist based in New York, Paris, and Seoul. Her practice combines performance, film, photo, and site-specific installation using textile, light, and sound. Kimsooja's work i ...

. The videos projected simultaneously that comprise

's ''A Needle Woman'' (1999) presents the artist wearing precisely the same clothes, standing precisely the same way, and, it would seem, at the same time of day in various urban environments.Madoff, Steven Henry, "Gnomon of Place, Gnomon of foreignness." Host & Guest catalogue for group exhibition at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2013

History

A Needle Woman premiered at CCA Kitakyushu in 1999. In the Kitakyshu version the artist presented a video channel where she lied on top of a rock formation, as Kimsooja explained "When I was invited to make a new commissioned work at the Center for Contemporary Art in Kitakyushu, Japan, I thought I would do a performance piece - one in the city of Tokyo, and the other one in nature. Then I would juxtapose them together. (…) As a result one was standing still in the middle of a crowd, while the other was lying down on a rock, facing nature. Verticality and horizontality were a metaphor for a dynamic balance between urban and natural forces." In further installations of ''A Needle Woman'' Kimsooja focused on the urban aspect of the work and shot a number of new videos where she stood absolutely still, her back facing the camera, amid passing crowds of inhabitants in Patan, Nepal; Havana, Cuba; N'Djamena, Chad; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Sana'a, Yemen; Jerusalem, Israel. Kimsooja in these videos is often described as a nomadic figure traveling across the world to come to rest in a crowded thoroughfare. The Needle referred to in the title is Kimsooja theorizing herself as a needle passing through the fabric of a place and its people. A common feature of the locations visited in the work is that they are all places of violence, disrepair or unresolved conflict; lending to the needle a metaphoric function as an instrument of suture and healing. Subsequent versions of ''A Needle Woman'' were shown at

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...

Contemporary art center in 2001, at the

Kunsthalle Bern The Kunsthalle Bern is a ''Kunsthalle'' (art exposition hall) on the Helvetiaplatz in Bern, Switzerland. It was built in 1917–1918 by the Kunsthalle Bern Association and opened on October 5, 1918. Since then, it has been the site of numerous e ...

in Bern Switzerland in 2001, for the 51st

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

as part of the

Arsenale The Venetian Arsenal ( it, Arsenale di Venezia) is a complex of former shipyards and armories clustered together in the city of Venice in northern Italy. Owned by the state, the Arsenal was responsible for the bulk of the Venetian republic's ...

in 2005, and was projected as a single channel public art project for La Nuit Blanche on the facade of Hotel de Ville, Paris in 2009 Kimsooja Biography: http://www.kimsooja.com/biography.html

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Needle Woman Performances Contemporary works of art Korean art Video art 1999 works