Mari Kim was born in South Korea and obtained a Master’s Degree in Creative media, at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, where she lived for ten years. Now based in her hometown of Seoul, Mari Kim works as Professor of Digital Media at the Catholic University, South Korea, alongside her art practice. Mari Kim’s wide-eyed, pretty, porcelaneous characters, known as ‘Eyedolls’, pay service to Japanese manga and anime culture. Often direct representations of well known political and historical figures, super heroes, or fairy tale characters, they are instantly recognisable icons that have been popularised by Western media.
1min 27sec
Exhibited: Famous, 2012
The video portrays historically famous women from around the world as they morph into Eyedolls. Alternatively, the Eyedolls can be viewed as playing the roles of these famous women. The women portrayed by Eyedolls have images that have been established and fixed by the mainstream media, the window through which contemporary Western civilization views the world. Kim wants the huge eyes of her Eyedolls to act as windows in a similar way, enabling the audience to perceive the world differently. Taking a step further, she wants the audience to reset the idées fixes injected by the media about the famous women. For this, she targets feminists who have taken after men in the process of achieving the goal of gender equality.
