Soun-Gui Kim (b. 1946 in Buyeo; lives in Paris, Viels-Maisons, and Seoul) draws on the fields of philosophy, art, and technology in wide-ranging works. Her practice includes paintings that interrogate the subjective expression of markmaking; spectator-participatory “situations” staged in public space; pinhole photography; video and multimedia installation; in addition to comparative studies in culture in dialogue with philosophers, such as Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. More recent works feature robots and machine learning technologies. After studying painting at Seoul National University (1966–71), she received a scholarship to study in France, where she worked with experimental artist groups and taught for many years at several universities. During a visit to New York in 1982, she spent time with artists working with video, such as Nam June Paik, Ko Nakajima, Ira Schneider, and Frank Gillett; she would later collaborate with Paik and invite others she met to participate in a 1986 exhibition she organized in Marseille.
Bringing together numerous concerns in Kim’s practice, Stock Garden (2022) is the most recent iteration of the artist’s thinking that dates to the 1980s and is informed by her travels during that period through Korea, China, Japan, and India. Kim observed firsthand the rapid transformation of ways of life and cultural values across Asia ushered in by a new era of global capitalism and neoliberal economic policy. This multimedia installation—comprised of video footage from traditional food markets juxtaposed with real-time feed from global stock markets that are projected onto live plants and museum visitors passing by—considers the relentless pursuit of profit and growth on individual lives, society, and the planet.
