The Thought of Connection and Correspondences, The Aesthetics of the Earth by Kim Soon-im

Art Critic Yu Hyun Ju

Looking Deeply

Kim Soon-im’s artistic practice is not only so much about creating works using nature as material, but also rather about connecting herself deeply with nature’s inner essence. The places she frequently visits—mountains, seashores, salt fields, laundries, small streams, water beneath bridges, warehouses, abandoned barns in neighborhoods—are all familiar, open spaces that are generally overlooked as unremarkable. However, her profound gaze into these places and her always responsive sensibility to nature transform these spaces from stagnant locations into ‘Stremy spaces.’

Kim’s concept of ‘Streamy spaces’ differs from simply seeing the earth as ‘land.’

For her, the earth is a place where the memories and materials of a region form layered surfaces piled one upon another. The spatial environment, nature, and the long-time inhabitants of a place are connected through time and gradually come to resemble one another, the artist says. Kim’s view that nature and humans are ‘co-inhabitants’ of a place who resemble one another resonates with Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, which understands natural and non-human actors connected with human actors in constructing a shared world.

From Latour’s perspective, the history of the earth is not a history solely centered on humans but one co-created together with natural and non-human actors that make up this planet. Understanding the Earth merely as the blue sphere photographed from Saturn by NASA is a limited view. Instead of praising only the external image of Earth while overlooking the intimate connections that sustain it, Kim believes that “by approaching closer, slowly and wholeheartedly observing,” one can clearly see—and be helped to see—the ‘Stream’ within this planet.

Sustaining Life

Seeing the Earth as a network, not only geologists but also humanists have begun paying attention to the Earth’s critical zone—the heterogeneous environment near the surface where complex interactions among rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms regulate natural habitats and determine the availability of resources necessary to sustain life. This understanding highlights the ‘symmetrical relationship’ between humans and nature and marks a paradigm shift away from modern rationalism, which has long justified human domination over nature or regarded nature as an object separate from humanity.