Kimsooja (born 1957 in Daegu, Korea; lives and works in New York) once said in an interview with curator Olivia María Rubio that her art is concerned with “old questions that have no answer.” Though her subject matter ranges from historical tragedies and the role of women in society to nomadism and the relationship between the self and the other, she always endeavors to bring forth the common thread of humanity within them all. She gathers together minimal elements—such as cloth, light, breath, people, her body—to construct her installation, photographic, performance, and video works. In the late 1990s, Kimsooja started making the series A Needle Woman, in which she visited eight of the world’s large cosmopolitan cities, and later cities in undeveloped countries. In each video of a different city, she is seen standing immobile with her back to the screen while throngs of urban crowds pass by or react to her. In this multichannel installation, Kimsooja acts as a needle threading in and out of the fabric of humanity in each place until they all become unified by her anonymous, silent presence
