Mari Kim

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. Based in her hometown of Seoul, Mari Kim works as a Digital Media professor 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, superheroes, or fairy tale characters are instantly recognizable icons popularised by Western media.

Artists

Lida Abdul, Afghanistan
Said Atabekov, Kazakhstan
Mohamed Bourouissa, Algeria
Chen Chieh-Jen, Taiwan
Cao Fei, China
Yang Fudong, China
Cyprien Gaillard, France
Dejan Kaludjerović, Yugoslavia
Mari Kim, South Korea
Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Thailand
Taus Makhacheva, Russia
Almagul Menlibayeva, Kazakhstan
Mariko Mori, Japan
Ahmet Ögüt, Turkey
Adrian Paci, Italy
Public Delivery, South Korea
Wang Qingsong, China
Walid Raad, Lebanon
Cheng Ran, China & Item Idem, France
Taps & Moses, Germany
Guido van der Werve, Netherlands
Erwin Wurm, Austria
Miao Xiaochun, China

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.