Artist-in-residence Jin Soo Kim chose a unique position to contemplate her work displayed at the Hopkins Center -- she physically sat on her installation, entitled "tracks."
Kim perched on the end of the railroad tracks spread across the Jaffe-Friede Gallery floor as she discussed the meaning of her piece and her term at the College as the artist-in-residence.
The art, consisting of railroad tracks and over 420 light bulbs laid out on the bare wood floor, stands for many things, Kim said.
The bulbs are either lit, unlit or broken at random, and can represent life, the hope of life or death.
Kim has left the interpretations of the work up to its viewers, but said the piece may inspire memories of trains that went to Nazi death camps in World War II.
"I want people to think of what the train has meant to life and the human experience," Kim said.
Kim said in creating the piece she thought about how trains have connected people throughout history and how they allowed people to "keep track of each other."
Kim said people find their own meanings in her work. One visitor from Chicago immediately likened the light bulbs to lights on Lake Michigan and the train tracks to Chicago's elevated train.
The Dartmouth piece is a first for Kim, who has made numerous installations throughout her career. This is the first time she has incorporated the work of other people in her piece, including the work of a Dartmouth music professor who recorded a CD of breaking light bulbs to play in the gallery.
Kim's first environmental installation was in 1983. Her pieces often contain materials and objects found in the environment around the exhibition space.
The material for "tracks" came from a New Hampshire recycling plant. She said by looking at natural materials and abandoned garbage one can get "an amazing sense of history" of a region.
This is installation 28 for Kim, who named her pieces alphabetically until she ran out of letters. Originally from Seoul, Korea, she trained professionally at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she now teaches.
Kim said she knew at around age 13 that she wanted to be an artist but discovered art training in Korea was very formal and limited.
She said she realized she would probably have to go overseas for training and so in Korea her art training was limited to reading a great deal about art and existentialism.
This period was helpful, Kim said, for figuring out how to approach art and herself intuitively, and to concentrate on how to identify herself in a non-academic situation.
Kim received her B.S. from Seoul National University, attended Western Illinois University in Korea, and got her Masters in Fine Arts from the School of the A.I.C.
She said the advice she most gives to students is not to go to an art school for their undergraduate degree.
She said Dartmouth is different than the Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University, near where she lives, but that she loves "the sparkle" in Dartmouth students' eyes.
