The exhibition space where Doki Kim's solo exhibition 《Swallowing Voice and Meeting the Moon》 (2022) was held was a renovated, aging multi-family house. Perhaps it was partly because the journey there had been rather arduous, given its location on the slopes of a hillside road, but upon entering, I somehow felt as though I had arrived at the very end of something.

An image resembling a fetus appeared on the ceiling of the room to the left, while an image of a bird with its wings fully outstretched appeared on the ceiling of the room to the right. I felt as though I were standing before an altar dedicated to commemorating beings who could no longer remain in this world, and the low, narrow exhibition space seemed like the inside of a coffin briefly illuminated.

Descending into the old-fashioned kitchen connected to the room on the right, I triggered a sensor that released a handful of sand-like powder onto the floor beneath my feet (Our Cold Time, 2022). The powder falls and accumulates on the floor only when someone steps into the space.

If we can call this small mound beneath our feet a grave formed by the footsteps of numerous visitors, then perhaps we can say that mourning begins with the very act of arriving at the exhibition.


Doki Kim, The Melting Sun in the Night, 2021, Paraffin wax, dye, candle wick, Dimensions variable © Doki Kim

Looking down at the mound that had accumulated beneath my feet, I was reminded of a clock that runs only when wound. A clock that would never stop as long as someone kept winding it. I began to think that mourning might not simply be an act of bidding farewell to the departed in sorrow, but could also involve building something up through each person's footsteps, or winding a clock to keep time moving forward.

The installation in what appeared to be the living room, consisting of multiple strands resembling pearl necklaces hanging from ceiling to floor, was titled Swallowing Voice and Meeting the Moon (2022). This work was later expanded into Echo, Filled in the Sea (2023) for 《Sea Art Festival 2023》.

The large net-shaped installation, measuring eight meters wide and four meters high, was created by collecting stories of things that people had been unable to convey to someone and translating them into Morse code through arrangements of pearls. "Words left unsaid" may seem closely tied to feelings of regret, but perhaps they are, in fact, more closely connected to wounds.


Doki Kim, Echo, Filled in the Sea, 2023, Artificial pearls, beads, stainless steel wire, 400 x 800 x 800 cm © Doki Kim

More often than not, words remain unspoken because we have harbored resentment, acted immaturely, or lacked understanding. For this reason, we tend to conceal these unspoken words or attempt to erase them entirely. When words are bound to reason, logos, and beings that are immediately present before us, they become clear and distinct messages.

Doki Kim, however, weaves together the "words left unsaid" of numerous individuals, transforming them into "echoes" that, though faint, can travel much farther. In this way, the net is transformed from a tool for catching something into a place where something gathers and takes shape, becoming a medium that carries the longing to reach farther.

Rather than continuing to discuss Doki Kim's work through the terminology of physics, including thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, as has often been done, I would like to center this discussion on the "echo," which originates from an individual voice yet belongs to no single person.

An echo suggests a movement toward continuation (duration) rather than the transmission of a clear and distinct message. I seek to understand the physics within Kim's work not merely as a means of questioning the visible, anthropocentric order, but also as a way of revealing fragile forms of existence that may disappear at any moment.


Doki Kim, The Melting Sun in the Night, 2021, Paraffin wax, dye, candle wick, Dimensions variable © Doki Kim

Perhaps the reason death is such a central theme in Doki Kim's work is that life, as she perceives it, is profoundly fragile. Beneath the dry laws and rigid principles of physics lies a desire and determination to give form to vulnerable beings whose existence is easily dissipated and left unrecorded.

Despite her clear inclination to distance herself from anthropocentrism, Kim's works are also inhabited by anonymous beings, faint emotions, seemingly futile wishes, and small, untold stories that have yet to come to light. I therefore feel that her works, which appear resolute and impassive, are in fact sustained by their reliance on fragile and vulnerable forms of existence.

Unlike a message, which aims to reach its destination (and thereby its conclusion), an echo defers its ending by reverberating through the air. At times, something faint and fragile can become the very force that opens up the disconnected time and space of an ending.

Covered in Night (2023), exhibited at the Busan Museum of Art, depicts a coffin composed of multiple layers. A coffin is a space that signifies an "end." If it contains a body, it marks a separation from the living; if it remains empty, it becomes a space that anticipates the end of an existence.


Doki Kim, Cover with the Night, 2023, Coffin, paraffin wax, dye, 300 x 195 x 51 cm © Doki Kim

Yet the coffin is covered with traces of something that has flowed down its surface. I would like to draw attention to this downward flow. The paraffin covering the entire coffin may appear to embody a harrowing and despairing death, but its texture, bearing the traces of time as it flowed downward, also seems to suggest that the coffin once held not a cold corpse but a being filled with warmth.

The flowing paraffin suggests that the space and time of death represented by the coffin are not simply brought to a close at the predetermined destination of an "end," but that another form of time continues to flow within it.

Facing Cover with the Night was White Shadows (2023), a work for which the artist personally visited people she knew and made plaster casts of their hands.

At first glance, the work evokes a death mask, but when one kneels down and touches the plaster casts placed on the floor, the warmth of an electric heater installed inside the work can be felt. In the anonymous form of a hand separated from the person to whom it belongs, and in the warmth emanating from it, we can discern Doki Kim's approach to the act of "shaping" (the making of an artwork).


Doki Kim, White Shadows, 2023, Plaster, heater, Dimensions variable © Doki Kim

For Doki Kim, "to shape" (빚다) is closely connected to "to pray" (빌다) and "to wish" (바라다). She shapes things in order to remember and commemorate someone. Because the act of shaping is intertwined with the act of praying, death in Kim's work is not an abrupt end like the edge of a cliff, but something that gently rises like a mound accumulating beneath one's feet, reverberating faintly like an echo that refuses to disappear.

If we consider how Kim's works, which appear to be grounded in the rigorous laws of physics, are in fact sustained by fragile and vulnerable things, we can recognize that "to be indebted" (빚지다) and "to make shine" (빛내다) are also intertwined with "to shape."

Here, "debt" signifies less an obligation to repay than the act of finding something to lean on or rely upon, as suggested by the Korean expression "비빌 언덕" (a hill to lean on). It is because we have something to lean on that we can continue moving forward without disappearing. The "flow of energy," free from distinctions of superiority or hierarchy, is the central material of Kim's artistic practice.

To describe what this material gives shape to as it moves, I would like to suggest that, for Kim, "to shape" is inseparable from "to lean on," and that there is a place illuminated by the force of this interconnection.


Doki Kim, White Shadows, 2023, Plaster, heater, Dimensions variable © Doki Kim
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