DAYTIME SLEEPWALKING

Artist Jihee Kim in conversation with JW Stella (an independent curator and a director of JW STELLA Arts Collectives) & Sylvia Lahav (an Associate Lecturer at ICCE in Goldsmiths College, University of London) about the prominent theme of female identity reflected on her art works.

지희 킴_Impossible Anxiety_The Crypt Gallery, London_2013

In her first solo exhibition in the UK, Daytime Sleepwalking at the Crypt Gallery (Co-sponsored by Alpha Art Association), Jihee kim, London and Seoul based Korean artist desired to re-illuminate her intimate engagement with the notion of introspection, which has always given an impetus to her creative activities. Kim's were based on her self-reflection and exploration of the artist's primary inspiration on the theme of female identity. However, this time Kim developed her craft further in more sophisticated and vibrant way of presenting. ● Under the conceptual exhibition title, Daytime Sleepwalking, Kim encouraged the use of the gallery as her private space to make no bones about her secretive desire and eager for the unattainablity. The extraordinary atmosphere of the Crypt Gallery, which was used for coffin burials as a part of St Pancras Parish Church in the past, contributed towards maximizing artist's intention. ● Therefore, as soon as the audience opened the heavy door of the gallery, they were directly introduced into the space, which was transformed into the artist's own personal archive. By encountering with the audience simultaneously through the exhibition, Kim's personal inspiration on female identity, more like a story of herself, made its headway toward the boundary of the public. In other words, the artist acted here as a sleepwalker, who wandered around the street in a state of unconsciousness, but during the daytime, surrounded by the crowd enjoying observing to her clandestinely.

지희 킴_Sleepless Nights series_The Crypt Gallery, London_2013

The exhibition composed of two book based installations (Sleepless Nights & Impossible Anxiety), and two drawing featured paper works (Stalker & Show Me Your Love), which were newly made in 2013. Particularly, it is worth taking a notice on Kim's first engagement with the new medium; books. The artist moved away from her previous use of papers, which is a traditional medium in art. In contrast to its conventional defining as the read-write medium, books here had new meaning as the visual art work by Kim's artistic creation. ● In the two series of Sleepless Nights and Impossible Anxiety, Kim brings abandoned English books to her new creative medium. Both series stands on her emotional detachment from English language and culture. Especially in Sleepless Nights, she transforms obscure and meaningless English books into her private diaries by simply putting personally engaged images inside. ● In the same context of Kim's use of the public space as her own, it could be also interpreted that from the moment of being selected by the artist, these books lost their public use value, and newly acquired the private value as the artist's own properties in the sense of transformation. However, ultimately by showing those personalized books again to the public, visually by the form of the exhibition, it seemed that she opened her personal library to her spectators and shared her covert feelings and thoughts with them intimately in terms of the interactional communication.

지희 킴_Stalker series_The Crypt Gallery, London_2013

지희 킴_Stalker series_The Crypt Gallery, London_2013

The images Kim depicted (sometimes, sewed and also painted) on the books were poetic, and symbolic, yet at the same time, they were ironically sexual and outspoken. Two different desires, which humans generally has, desire to conceal and disclose twilight appetite, were intermingled concurrently in Sleepless Night. Furthermore, it got developed to the state of resistance against social conservative request on woman to be virtuous. In that sense, the artist challenged to reveal such a taboo subject on the surface and by her trying to have a secret chat with audience, she intensified the feeling of tension.

지희 킴_Stalker series_The Crypt Gallery, London_2013

Constantly, under the theme of 'Womanizing', Kim's another book series, titled Impossible Anxiety, presented artist's ambivalent attitude toward contemporary standard of beauty, generally established by mass-medias with commercial purposes. It was characterized by pop up images of groups of female paper dolls on the books. Mostly theses are images of western women, sheared off from fashion magazines and websites on the Internet. ● Mainly, it implied Kim's skepticism on the present circumstance of woman's pursuit on the standard of beauty, established by male-centered consumerism. In addition, she also critically looked at Asian women's indiscreet desire for westernized beauty in the way of losing their own natural standard of beauty. By showing a group of paper dolls and their lifeless and splintery characteristics, she eventually pointed out how meaningless and futile it was to pursue blindly this unified imaging standard of beauty. However, there was a frank, but incredulous confession of the artist behind the matter to admitting that the artist is also one of the women, who were exposed in this kind of situation and longed for that beauty. ■ Amy Gahyun Lee

Vol.20130810g | 지희 킴展 / JIHEE KIM / 金芝嬉 / installation