스킵네비게이션

Sea and Land, 2019, Mixed media

KIM Bokyung 

Sea and Land

❑ artist bio

Kim Bokyung is born in 1982 in Busan, lives and works in Busan. She has MA in Fine Art from Frank Mohr Institute in 2015; finished master course in Fine Arts from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art in 2010; and holds BA in Fine Arts from Ehwa Women’s University in 2005. She is well traveled artist participating in artist-in-residence programs including Vermont Studio Center’s in 2014, and ones in Hong Kong and Japan; currently works as artist-in-resident at Historic Downtown Culture Cluster, Totatoga.

❑ introduction

The artist examines the relationship between mankind and natural environment mainly using her body as medium as well as the change of consciousness through performance art to create process of self-healing. Rebirth in Mother’s Womb (2019) shown at Fish Pond Diving Sustainable Art Festival in 2019, for example, she symbolically expressed original scenes mankind and nature in the basis on her own experience and memories. While participating in the activities with performance artists group, ‘Femicology’ in Dongbaekseom in Busan, Tsushima Island, Japan, etc., she has placed the focus of her practice on values of Feminism and ecology. Dealing the issues that we are facing now such as gender, discrimination, social problems, violences, etc., she brings about the sympathies for them through her performances.

 Sea and Land (2019) that she is presenting for this year’s Sea Art Festival, is an symbolic allegory projecting the look of the present time over that of the beginning of the nature. In this work, mother is the metaphor for the sea while the beautiful land separated from mother’s womb symbolizes the current reality of the land which lost its look in the past and gradually became sick because of men’s selfishness. In this piece, the artist features her mother standing still at a place throughout the performance to take a role representing the sea. As if she is showing the polluted land is what we are, the artist keeps being pulled back as though she keep attempting to reach her mother sea, on the sand beach. The performance is brought to an end when mother-sea waters the land that crouches and is wrapped with dark cloth and sand, not being able to reach the sea after all. The performance reminds us of that the nature is fundamental being and the place to which mankind will return in the end.