Ru Kim (b. 1995) works primarily with performance, video, sound, installation, and text to explore the social function of art and the structures of violence. In particular, Kim has presented works that question how art can resist sexist and racist violences that have been normalized through colonial ideologies of domination.

Born in Germany and raised across Cyprus, Canada, Korea, and Brazil, Ru Kim has reflected on the role of art in exploring and deconstructing the structures of violence embedded within sexism and racism encountered across different cultural contexts. To this end, Kim grounds their practice in research on the histories that have generated today’s forms of violence, the archival records that testify to them, and philosophical frameworks as conceptual methodologies for dismantling them.

For instance, Ru Kim’s 2019 research-based installation Peoples of Europe, Defend your Holiest Possessions takes as its starting point a 19th-century German lithograph of the same title, created in the context of the Russo-Japanese War. The lithograph called for European solidarity with Russia, grounded in fears of cultural and racial difference from the East.
 
This image was circulated in American and French newspapers under the headline “The Yellow Peril,” a phrase that resurfaced during the COVID-19 pandemic as a derogatory expression against East Asians.

Ru Kim conducted research on this lithograph and connected its historical context to contemporary Germany. Tracing the history of Vietnamese migration to Germany—facilitated by socialist alliances beginning in the 1960s—the artist questioned how the discrimination experienced by Vietnamese communities continues to shape German society today.
 
From this research emerged fundamental questions: “Who has the right to stay somewhere?” “What remains of one’s presence?” and “What are we constructing?”
 
Grounded in these questions, Ru Kim reconstituted several elements of the original 19th-century lithograph within the physical exhibition space. Here, the audience’s bodies themselves became tools of deconstruction, their movements serving as active agents in dismantling and reconfiguring the image.

The following year, upon relocating to Korea, Ru Kim presented their first work there, Tax Returns / 분청사기상감인화문붕명둔접 (2020), produced during their residency at Clayarch Gimhae Museum and based on regional and medium-specific research.
 
The artist combined records from the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty that document queer practices among 15th-century court ladies with contemporaneous tribute ceramics. Onto plates shaped after buttocks, Kim engraved the character bung (朋)—a symbol the court ladies tattooed on one another’s bodies—and produced them using the same techniques as tribute porcelain. These plates were then distributed one by one to exhibition visitors, staging a gesture of “returning” a portion of the citizens’ taxes back to them.

Meanwhile, in their 2021 work, Ru Kim explored the notion of “boundaries” through the concept of the “ecotone”—a transitional zone between distinct geological forms such as water and land, or two different kinds of forest. They particularly focused on the “edge effect” that arises at the meeting point of two biomes, where water, as a boundary-crossing agent, enables contact between otherwise separate ecosystems, resulting in a flourishing of greater diversity and abundance of life.
 
Kim reimagined this concept of the ecotone by applying it to the notion of “we” in Korean society. To do so, they analyzed the records of Korea’s direct election results from 1963 to 2017, and translated regions divided by political orientation into representations of animals.

Alongside this research into the ecotone, Ru Kim’s central preoccupation has been water as a non-human mediator. A representative example is the series ‘Eye, nose, mouth, ear, forehead, chin, cheekbone, eyebrow,’ first presented in 2021 at the 《Mediterranea 19 Young Artists Biennale》. The works draw on strategies of water described in gender and cultural theorist Astrida Neimanis’s theory of hydrofeminism.
 
Building on hydrofeminism’s view of water as an active agent that connects all life forms—human and non-human alike—Ru Kim explores water’s own qualities as strategies to dismantle the boundaries and histories of violence constructed by humans, and to imagine possible exits from them.

In Kim’s 2021 solo exhibition 《FACE VALUE》 at Artist Residency TEMI in Daejeon, Ru Kim traced the journeys of water through installation and text works, connecting them to the concept of escape. While water may appear similar in its physical qualities, Kim highlights its radically different roles and uses across three distinct situations.
 
Here, water is activated as a non-human medium: the waters beneath the Han River’s Suicide Bridge, the waters of the Mediterranean Sea marked by refugee crossings, and the waters of a floatation therapy tank. By scripting and staging these waters as if for a play, Kim creates a scene in which they themselves speak back—reflecting on the ways humans instrumentalize and impose meaning upon them.

Ru Kim conducted research on the situations and histories generated between each body of water and humans. They then translated the elements they discovered into sculptural fragments, dispersing them throughout the exhibition space to construct a stage for water. Stories interpreted as the voice and ‘mind’ of the water, as well as narratives seen from the water’s perspective, were installed in the exhibition in the form of a script.
 
Additionally, a rope stretching from above the ceiling down to the floor—made of Manila hemp, a material commonly used in ships that strengthens when wet—served as a visual surrogate for water, occupying the stage within the space.

The solo exhibition 《Ecotone: Capacity for Escape》 (Post Territory Ujeongguk, 2022), which explored interactions between Ru Kim’s previous works, takes as its starting point the presence of the snake in Gloria Anzaldúa’s Chicana feminist text Borderlands/La Frontera.
 
The snake has historically symbolized phallic power, associated with notions such as “failing to maintain a woman’s chastity” or “being dangerous when bitten,” and is perceived as threatening due to its “venom” and its “ability to penetrate.” In Anzaldúa’s book, the author drinks the blood of a dead rattlesnake and that night dreams of seeing the world through the eyes of a snake.

Here, the snake emerges as a figure that traverses the boundaries of identity—including race, gender, and sexuality—linking two worlds. Inspired by this, Ru Kim created a space-time of the snake that evokes a political awareness of the dominant logics circulating and entangling our bodies, and through spatiotemporal installations and devices combining image, sound, and performance, they sought to challenge binary and fixed notions of identity.

Beginning in 2023, the performance series ‘a fist is a fist is a fist’ originates from the concept of the “fist,” understood both as the tip of the body and as a symbol with layered social implications. Ru Kim focused on how the meaning of a fist radically shifts depending on the shape of the hand, the context in which it appears, and the nuances of adjectives attached to it.
 
The performance expresses the concept of ignition—the fleeting moment when a spark is lit—through variations of sound, gestures of opening and closing the fist, and scenes in which performers’ fists and bodies intersect. Ignition signifies not only the starting point of a fire but also carries layered meanings, encompassing the blossoming of plants or the flourishing of a particular culture. The repeated motions of clenching and unclenching fists symbolize deliberate deviation and disruption.

Last year, at the solo exhibition 《I KNOW WHAT I’VE DONE》 held at This is Not a Church (TINC), Ru Kim presented video works, new sculptures and installations, and performances based on research conducted earlier that June at an Italian residency (7th edition CROSS International Performance Award 2023–2024 – COLLATERALE).
 
Ru Kim focused on a myth related to Lake Orta in the northern Piedmont region of Italy. According to the story, a figure named Saint Giulio resolved to build 100 churches in the area. After constructing 99, he aimed to build the final one on an island in the lake. Villagers tried to dissuade him, claiming the island was the “Island of Snakes.” Undeterred, he crossed to the island, killed all the snakes, built the last church, and eventually passed away.

Based on this myth, the video work I KNOW WHAT I’VE DONE (2024) depicts a brief revival and encounter between Saint Giulio and the Snake. The piece poses questions such as: “If the island had a tongue, what would it say? Could the snakes ever return? And were those snakes really snakes?”
 
The exhibition reinterprets the myth of the “Island of Snakes” through sculptures, installations, and other media within a space that was once used as a church, bringing the story into a contemporary context. Additionally, the exhibition references the final line of the protagonist in Octavia E. Butler’s unfinished Parable trilogy.
 
In Butler’s allegory, the protagonist Lauren possesses “hyperempathy,” experiencing the suffering of others as if it were her own skin. This ability to sense the pain and presence of others beyond one’s own boundaries functions within the exhibition as a device to recall those beings who, like the snakes, had to disappear or hide.

Ru Kim’s work, developed through tracing the layered histories that have shaped today’s pervasive structures of violence, recalls beings marginalized and sacrificed under colonialist and hegemonic ideologies. At the same time, it explores art as a means for those still affected by these structures to find ways of escape.
 
Ru Kim’s work brings renewed awareness to the enduring histories of violence, while imagining a non-hierarchical world in which diverse beings—human and non-human—transcend binary boundaries to exist in a state of co-dependence.

 ”Employing various media such as video, photography, sound, performance, installation, and text, they seek to develop forms that challenge binaries and fixed identities.”     (Ru Kim, excerpt from the artist statement) 

Ru Kim graduated with a BFA and MFA in Fine Arts from the École Supérieure d’Art et Design de Grenoble-Valence, France. Solo exhibitions include 《I KNOW WHAT I’VE DONE》 (TINC, Seoul, 2024), 《a fist is a fist is a fist》 (Boan 1942, CHOI&CHOI Gallery, Space 413, 2023, Seoul, 2023), and 《Ecotone: Capacity for Escape》 (Post Territory Ujeongguk, Seoul, 2022).
 
Their work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including 《off-fsite 2: Eleven Episodes》 (Kukje Gallery, Seoul, 2025), 《Coalition of Waters》 (Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art (BGSW), Ustka, Poland, 2025), 《Enact/In Act》 (Millennium Film Archive, Brooklyn, USA, 2024), 《glitch: new flesh》 (Visaural, New York, USA, 2023), 《killtimetrash_temp》 (WESS, Seoul, 2023), the Coimbra Contemporary Art Biennale (2022), and 《Fascination》 (Centre Rhénan d’Art Contemporain (CRAC Alsace), Altkirsh, France, 2021).
 
Ru Kim has been an artist-in-residence at l’École Supérieure d’Art et de Design Grenoble (France, 2025), at the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art (Poland, 2025), and at the 7th Cross Award Residency (Italy, 2024), and was awarded the 7th Cross Award – COLLATERALE (Italy, 2023–2024).

References

• 루킴, Ru Kim (Artist Website)
• 경기도립미술관, [전시] ⟪N ARTIST 2021 : 의심하는 돌멩이의 노래⟫ 루킴
• 비애티튜드, 지금 꿈꾸는 미래의 미래를 품을 수 있는 미래
• 대전테미예술창작센터, [전시 소개] FACE VALUE 얼굴을 위한 리허설 (Artist Residency TEMI, [Exhibition Overview] FACE VALUE)
• 대전테미예술창작센터, [도록] FACE VALUE 얼굴을 위한 리허설 (Artist Residency TEMI, [Catalogue] FACE VALUE)
• 아트선재센터, [리플렛] 오프사이트 2: 열한 가지 에피소드 (Art Sonje Center, [Reflet] off-site 2: Eleven Episodes)
• 탈영역우정국, [서문] 에코톤: 탈출 역량 (Post Territory Ujeongguk, [Preface] Ecotone: Capacity for Escape)
• 프리즈, 프리즈 위크 서울, 도시 전역에서 펼쳐지는 프리즈 라이브 퍼포먼스, 2025.08.20