WASHINGTON, DC.- In Kimsooja's A Laundry Woman, Yamuna River, Delhi, 2000, the artist acts as a visual and spiritual mediator through which viewers are invited to contemplate the flow of the river--a metaphor for life. The work evolved from the series A Needle Woman, 1999-2000, in which the artist appeared as "everywoman," with her back to the camera, venturing onto city streets around the world or reclining on a rock perch, lying still while clouds pass overhead.

The artist appears to lose herself in these contemplative scenarios, becoming immersed in the world and anonymous "like a needle in a haystack," and then emerges to provide a poetic focal point--a viewpoint through the eye of the proverbial needle.Kimsooja explores the properties of fabric through video, sculpture, and installations. Her work often conflates Eastern and Western traditions and investigates the common ground between intimate, personal realms and those of universal global dimensions.

Kimsooja was born in Taegu, Korea. She lives in New York yet maintaining a regular rapport with her homeland.

Her most recent works include Bottari, a collection of nuptial bedcovers, tied in bundles and representing existential sculptures in which the daily life of women and the nostalgia of exile is portrayed. Needle and fabric are the metaphoric elements which also appeared in the artists videos, such as Needle Woman (1999-2001) which was presented at the Biennale of Venice.

Kimsooja has had solo exhibitions in important museums such as the Magasin in Grenoble, the PS1.MoMA in New York, the Kunsthalle in Bern, the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, the Kunsthalle in Vienna, the National Gallery of Warsaw, the Musée dArt Contemporain in Lion, the Honolulu City Hall in Hawaii, the Musuem Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, and her performance 59th Munuite was performed in Times Square in New York. In April she will be exhibiting at the Palacio de Crystal in Madrid with a work involving light and sound.

She has participated in international exhibitions of such prestige as the Biennale of Venice, of Kwangiu, of San Paolo, of Lion, of Sydney, of Valencia, in Manifesta, at the itinerant exhibition Cities on the Move and in numerous collective shows in the some of the most renowned museums in the world.