In the video Sewing into walking the artist wanders slowly through a landscape gathering fabrics, creating beauty in the conscious performance of daily rituals. Sewing into walking was filmed near the city of Kyoung Ju, an ancient and spiritually significant site in Korea.

“In the modern society, bundles have been changing into bags. For me this is like a symbolic ghost that can’t be thrown away; a ghost representing our life. A bundle is the minimum we carry through our lives. When I was little, we moved a lot from village to village, city to city, and it influences my art. In Korean society, when we say ‘wrap the bundle,’ it generally means leaving or moving. My bundles, instead, have nowhere to go. Instead of wrapping the bundles for leaving, I prefer to accumulate them. I usually wrap clothing that has been used; so, in a way, it’s like hugging the people who wore them. Bedcovers are the basic field of birth and death. And the human body, the most basic bundle, lies on and under this bedcover. Making bundles is like wrapping bodies and souls within your own skin. The skin represents another kind of fabric, while the bedcover is in between. In the work I did for the show Sewing into walking in Seoul, I tried to connect the concept of ‘sewing’ to that of ‘walking’ and daily life.” – Kimsooja, 1997.

_
Source: Wrapping bodies and Souls in Flash Art no. 192 Jan-Feb 1997