An Album: Hudson Guild
Public Art
An Album: Hudson Guild
Kimsooja’s An Album: Hudson Guild depicted the multi-cultural senior community at the Hudson Guild Senior Center in Chelsea, NYC. Engaging with residents, the Kimsooja filmed them silently, preserving confidentiality. The film explored human emotions and capturing the diverse personalities of the participants.
When
2009
Where
Community engagement sessions at the Hudson Guild, Chelsea.
Exhibited at The Modern’s studios in the Flatiron Neighborhood, New York, NY
Kimsooja, An Album: Hudson Guild, Chelsea, NY. 2009
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About the artist
Kimsooja, An Album: Hudson Guild, Chelsea, NY. 2009
Kimsooja’s An Album: Hudson Guild was a video project created in collaboration with the multi-cultural community of senior citizens from the Hudson Guild Senior Center in Chelsea, New York City. The artist spent several days asking residents about their lives, backgrounds, families, and memories. After spending time gaining their trust and support, she filmed them over a period of two weeks.
The final video is silent, therefore maintaining confidentiality between the artist and sitter. The images are charged with emotions that speak for themselves, resulting in a work that is both elegant and moving. The camera lingers for several minutes on each protagonist, capturing their diverse personalities and attitudes through the subtly changing emotions visible in their deep-lined and expressive features.
Album: Hudson Guild was a delicate and profound investigation of human emotions. Each participant embarked on his or her own psychological journey, which led them from their past to the present and future. In the first few minutes, the viewer has the impression that the participants self-consciously “act” for the camera. But, with guidance from Kimsooja, each sitter allowed their thoughts to drift and their awareness to shift inward. The film was a testament to the richness and complexity of each and every individual.
Participants
Kathy Andrade, Steven H. Brown, George Colon, Katherine Chung, James F. Gonzales, Isreal Gonzalez, Kenneth Kilpela, William Kushner, Norma Langbert, Merle Lister Levine, Virgil McBee, Ellwood McKiver, José Méndez, Raymond Miskell, Omayra Navia, Victor Ortiź, David Lee Rackley, Reinaldo Rodriguez, Migel Torres, Irene Sadek, Maria T. Webster
Supporters
Kimsooja
Kimsooja is an internationally acclaimed conceptual multi-media artist. Her practice combines performance, film, photo, and site-specific installation using textile, light, and sound. Kimsooja’s work reaches into conceptual and experiential domains latent in our surroundings and brings us to an awareness of self and others; she investigates questions concerning the conditions of humanity, while engaging issues of aesthetics, culture, politics, and the environment. Her principle of ‘non-doing’ and ‘non-making,’ which follows a conceptual and structural investigation of performance through modes of mobility and immobility, inverts the notion of the artist as the predominant actor. Kimsooja’s work invites us to question our existence, the world, and the major challenges we are facing in this era.
She was born in Daegu, Korea, a city known for its textile industry. After studying painting in Seoul, she had a residency at a lithography studio at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris (1984-1985) and at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York (1992-1993). In the early 1980s her artistic practice started focusing on sewn work, which later evolved into the widely-acclaimed performance, "A Needle Woman", in 1999.
Kimsooja, An Album: Hudson Guild, Chelsea, NY. 2009
Kimsooja, An Album: Hudson Guild, Chelsea, NY. 2009
Kimsooja, An Album: Hudson Guild, Chelsea, NY. 2009
Kimsooja, An Album: Hudson Guild, Chelsea, NY. 2009
Kimsooja, An Album: Hudson Guild, Chelsea, NY. 2009
Kimsooja, An Album: Hudson Guild, Chelsea, NY. 2009
