{"id":14374,"date":"2019-11-23T16:04:55","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T21:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=14374"},"modified":"2019-11-23T16:05:55","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T21:05:55","slug":"kimsooja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/11\/23\/kimsooja\/","title":{"rendered":"Kimsooja Invites You To Roll A Ball Of Clay And Reshape Your Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cArchive of Mind\u201d by South Korean artist Kimsooja<\/a> invites you to sit at a large oval wooden table, spotlit in a darkened gallery at Salem\u2019s Peabody Essex Museum, and shape a ball of clay between your hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuietly focus on rolling the clay into a smooth ball. Push it to the center of the table when you\u2019re done,\u201d a sign on the wall says. There it joins hundreds of gray and brown balls made by previous visitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cForming your ball of clay can have a calming, meditative effect. The balls you make evoke the rounded forms of planets or atoms,\u201d according to the gallery sign.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cArchive<\/a>
\u201cArchive of Mind\u201d by South Korean artist Kimsooja at Salem\u2019s Peabody Essex Museum, July 20, 2019. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Personally, I found myself in something of a hurry during my visit and struggled at entering a meditative, calm state of mind. It didn\u2019t help that I couldn\u2019t keep my mind from feeling somewhat skeptical of the project\u2019s grand ambitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cyclical act introduces a polarity between symmetrical forces of the participants’ palms that transpose their state of mind into matter and matter into void,\u201d according to the website of the artist<\/a>, who splits her time between New York and Seoul.<\/p>\n

Or, as the sign at the museum, says, \u201cBy sitting at the communal table and adding your gesture to those of your fellow visitors, you are demonstrating how small individual actions can accumulate and become powerful over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Try your hand at the participatory project on view at the museum from June 22, 2019, to Jan. 20, 2020.<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"\u201cArchive<\/a>
\u201cArchive of Mind\u201d by South Korean artist Kimsooja at Salem\u2019s Peabody Essex Museum, July 20, 2019. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\u201cArchive<\/a>
\u201cArchive of Mind\u201d by South Korean artist Kimsooja at Salem\u2019s Peabody Essex Museum, July 20, 2019. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\u201cArchive<\/a>
\u201cArchive of Mind\u201d by South Korean artist Kimsooja at Salem\u2019s Peabody Essex Museum, July 20, 2019. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cArchive of Mind\u201d by South Korean artist Kimsooja invites you to sit at a large oval wooden table, spotlit in a darkened gallery at Salem\u2019s Peabody Essex Museum, and shape a ball of clay between your hands. \u201cQuietly focus on rolling the clay into a smooth ball. Push it to the center of the table […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[47,46],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14374"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14383,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14374\/revisions\/14383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}