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| Kimsooja Born in 1957 in Taegu, Korea. Lives and works in the USA. Always on the move, Kimsooja develops her installations, performances, videos and photo-works by observing and juxtaposing different cultures and human conditions, as well as a structural investigation that has evolved in parallel throughout her practice. The video projection Mumbai: A Laundry Field was created in the Indian city of Mumbai, formerly Bombay, as a continuity of her series A Laundry Woman. In one of the projections, the camera takes the viewer through the alleyways of various slums of Mumbai. The living conditions that prevail in the different slums have their own structure, as well as their own specific religious communities. Though in some quarters Hindus, Muslims and Christians live in the same community, the parallelism of the different cultures remain. You can find slums in which human dignity seems to be irrelevant and in which people, obviously ignored and abandoned by the rest of society, dwell -some living in cots- amidst the stench of trash and waste of bad plumbing systems. But even these areas appeal to the foreign visitor aesthetically, because of their colourful laundry hanging on walls and in narrow alleys. They are perceived as places that are -though inhuman conditions predominate- affected by zest for life. Another projection shows the washers of the quarter of Dhobighat at work. Water sprays vibrantly while the brightly coloured laundry is scrubbed, splashed, and dried. Even the washing place itself, which was created during colonial rule and demonstrates the hardship of the workers in Dhobighat, seems to be filled with festive colours. The chore of the washer, the cleaning of other people's clothes, is relegated to the lowest class of people in the Indian caste system. It seems as if the washers -by tossing the laundry- are at pains to purify their own Karma. The sound of their heavy breathing appears to emphasize this impression. The scene on another screen shows a commuter train running through Mumbai, crammed-full with people. The travelers also sit on the train roofs and articulated axles in-between the wagons. Allegorically, the scene conveys the everyday struggle for life of these people. While the clothes of the rail travelers flutter in the wind and correspond visually with the drying laundry of the adjacent projections in a magnificent way, the viewer still poses the burdensome question concerning aesthetic value and fate of the individual in this society. The final channel in this piece shows the lively darkened streets of Mumbai, which fades into light as day rises. The screen is full of covered sleeping figures, the active tumult of families waking, bathing, talking, and working, lit fires glowing for cooking and warmth, and cars, scooters, carts all passing by. These private dramas of daily life unfold on the public streets, as the camera makes its slow trajectory forward. The recurring motif of housing structures and shelters, the colourful spectacle of hanging laundry and the dichotomy of the aforementioned lust for life contrasts against the poverty and abandoned strata of people it witnesses. The images of the video work Mumbai: A Laundry Field have a direct and powerful impact. Its energy enchants and consternates at the same time. A conflict emerges from the consciousness that the viewer comes to question on the reality and it's hardships of tragedy and poverty, even violence, compared to the rich and colourful visual information and experience –obviously detached from reality– that embodies it's aesthetic value and quality.  Download CV |  Mumbai: A Laundry Field, 2007-2008 |
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