AO Art Observed™

Miru Kim, The Pig That Therefore I Am (2011). All Images by Martha Cooper for Primary Projects.

Korean-American artist Miru Kim debuted The Pig That Therefore I Am at Primary Projects in Miami’s Design District during Art Basel this week. As the title indicates, Kim’s 104-hour performance piece (which spanned four days, eight hours without breaking) involved exclusively eating, drinking, sleeping, and interacting in the gallery space’s constructed pigpen. Although Kim was behind glass, and therefore any sound she or the pigs made was muted, a gallery assistant was on site to prevent any leaning or knocking, as well as any photo or video documentation. All circulated images were taken by Primary Project’s Martha Cooper, and Bodies (IA) 1, a digital C-print of pigs taken in 2010, is available for purchase at an initial $8,000, increasing incrementally by $500 after every new edition is sold.

Miru Kim’s habitation exercise stems from her interest in the well-being of oth pigs and humans. Preceded by recent work with industrial hog farms, and followed by a footnote on finding the performing pigs good homes, Kim’s poetic-form personal statement explains her intention to use the experience for deeper understanding of life itself. In the poem, called I Like Pigs and Pigs Like Me, Kim writes, “Perhaps we will see what it’s like to be a pig,/and what it’s like to be a human./Perhaps the difference is blurred,/mingling through skin on skin,/in the mud where all ends and begins.” The poem is not the only point of reference for the work, however. In her exploratory statement online, Kim explains that her childhood’s sense of wonder led to her studies as a premedical undergraduate, in which she examined genetic similarities between pigs and humans on a solely scientific level. In her new, physically intensive work, Kim fuses the whimsy of childhood discovery with the more abstract critical thinking, by immersing herself in the mind and body of the pig.

The artist sat, rolled, and patted in mud with the pigs in their pen. With hay in her hair, she laid her head on the pigs and napped. Although she ate and drank separately from the pigs behind a barricade, she ate and drank the same foods visible in the front-facing trough. Miru Kim strived to look like the pigs as well; not only in her nudity, but she writes in her poem that even her weight is approximate to her fellow animals. She was unable to comment during the performance, as her silence also mimicked pig interaction.

The sizable crowd the performance drew was fascinated, but at times dismayed with concerns about disease intermingled with references to her humanity (‘well at least she’s pretty’ and ‘she looks bored’ among others) which underscored Kim’s intent to physically and emotionally recontextualize herself. Previous works involved her posing for photographs similarly naked with the backdrops of dysfunctional cityscapes. The parallel performance begets the same questions, with the new inclusion of dramatic health and interactive concerns from an audience, and the inevitable aftereffect of a relationship with the animals.

Kim was born and educated in the United States, but was raised in Seoul, South Korea. Her work has been shown in Istanbul, Turkey,  Montevideo, Uruguay, and Łódź, Poland, as well as the permanent collections of the Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Montevideo, the Museum of the City of Łódź, and the Fountainhead Residency in Miami. In Poland, Kim participated in the 2010 Łódź Biennale, where she again worked with mud and nudity, in a six hour performance called Mud Bath for Thick Skin.

She double-majored in French and Romance Philology at Columbia University in 2003, and received an MFA in Painting at the Pratt Institute three years later. While the anxiety she feels about the city often influences her work (notably in the ongoing City Spleen photoset), Miru Kim continues to live and work in New York.

- A. Bregman

Related Links:

Miru Kim [Artist Site]
Nude Pig Artist to Class Up Miami Beach
Art Basel 2011: Miru Kim’s ‘The Pig That Therefore I Am’ Exhibit (EXPLICIT PHOTOS) [Huffington Post]

This entry was posted on Monday, December 5th, 2011 at 9:22 am and is filed under AO On Site, Art Fair, Art News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.