Christiana Kim 2/8 Miru Kim

As I was randomly researching different artists on Wikipedia I fell across Miru Kim. She was born in the United States but went back to Seoul Korea and was raised there. She came back to the states and went to school in NYC where she fell in love with her surroundings and changed from MD to MFA. She was fascinated with rats because she felt like they were very much apart of society. She saw a duality between people seeing them as pests and humanity seeing them as a useful tool to create medicines and cure diseases. This phase lead her into the series that I've chosen to speak about. Its called Naked City Spleen. While following these rats she saw herself in places that the rest of the city couldn't see like in the tunnels of the subways. She felt like she was in a different dimension in the same city. She then went to many abandoned buildings to took photos of these "soon to be demolished structures". These images weren't enough for her so she decided to create a character of some sort. She chose herself in the nude. She says the reason why she chose this subject is because it was the easiest at the time and she chose to be de-clothed because there wouldn't be a time period these photos would be particular to and there wouldn't be any cultural references.

The entire series really speaks out how apart of nature we really are and how the world continues to evolve. There is a photo in her series where she is naked, her face blurred in a gestural position, sitting on an autopsy table with used utensils and some sort of bottle with liquid placed half hazard. Its creepy looking at this photo because the viewer knows that this building has been abandoned (every building is abandoned in this series) and these objects have been left there undisturbed for years.

The photo I posted is called Old Aqueduct, Bronx which was an old aqueduct build in the 1800s. She expresses how she loves feeling like she is in that moment of history as she feels the bricks with her hands. I think this photo is beautiful and I really like the way she uses reflection. She goes into detail about this series and particularly this photo http://www.ted.com/talks/miru_kim_s_underground_art.html .

I really admire her work because I share some of her ideas and passions when it comes down to society and the relationship to the world (cities, nature, time, etc.) Hopefully throughout the semester I could implement these ideas. Her series is definitely something worth to take a look at.

http://www.mirukim.com/