In her new exhibition at Galleria Continua’s Beijing branch, Korean-born, globe-trotting artist target=”blank_”>Kimsooja explores the caste system in India through the use of colorful fabrics, photography, and a video installation. A passageway leads viewers between vibrantly colored swatches of Indian fabric hung on one wall and photographs depicting members of Mumbai’s poorest caste on the other. In a larger gallery, a tricycle-wagon, Bottari, is piled high with bundles of Chinese bedclothes, and the four-channel video in the main gallery captures the sound, colors, and anonymity of the migrant Mumbai laundrymen known as dhobi. Unlike Kimsooja’s earlier work, which often featured the artist herself, this exhibit takes on a third-person perspective, observing the rhythms of labor and finding a poetic beauty there.
