Following a successful year that included five solo exhibitions in 2012, Kimsooja, whose work ranges from performance and video to photo and site-specific installations, will represent Korea at this year’s Venice Biennale, which opens in June. The Korean-born, New York-based artist is poised to transform the country’s modern, geometric pavilion—the last national pavilion built within the Giardini—into a conceptual light and sound installation.

Kimsooja’s presentation at the Biennale, organized by the Arts Council of Korea, is curated by Seungduk Kim, co-director of Le Consortium contemporary art center in Dijon, France. Describing her curatorial concept in a phone interview, Kim highlighted the pavilion’s architectural elements as an important aspect of the project: “I knew immediately that I did not want to present a white cube show. I did not want to build a wall, or block any windows. My idea was to confront the structure exactly as it is.” After conducting extensive technical research, and talking with a number of artists to see who could devise the best way to realize the project, Kim was drawn to Kimsooja’s proposal, which strongly resonated with the curator’s vision.

In early March, Kimsooja discussed her Venice project with ArtAsiaPacific, at her studio in Long Island City, New York, pointing to her interest in utilizing, rather than ignoring, the Korean Pavilion’s awkward architectural elements. A secluded, 250-square-meter space with many windows, a front garden, backyard and roof terrace, the pavilion is more like a small house than an exhibition venue. “I decided to present this project as a solution to the problems of the pavilion, while emphasizing specificities of the original structure with minimum modification,” Kimsooja said. The project will be an extension of To Breathe – A Mirror Woman (2006–08), a site-specific installation at the greenhouse-like Palacio de Cristal (The Crystal Palace) in Madrid. This intervention covered the building in translucent, diffraction grating film, which filtered sunlight into a rainbow spectrum that illuminated the venue. The floor was layered with mirrors that emanated refractions throughout the building, while the recorded sound of the artist’s breathing was played in the background.

In addition the Korea Pavilion will explore the motif of the bottari, which is a traditional wrapping cloth that is used in Korea, and is a career-long theme for Kimsooja. Bottari, which means “bundle” in Korean, is used to both wrap and carry a variety of goods, including food, gifts and personal belongings. The multipurpose cloth is an essential element of life—it both wraps and unwraps objects connected to the joy, anger, grief and pleasure of its users.

Kimsooja’s project will incorporate the building’s existing structure by “wrapping” its “skin” in natural light, treating it as a form of bottari. As the sun shifts from east to west throughout the day, there will be changes in light, affecting the variation and intensity of the rainbow spectrum inside the pavilion. Incoming light will be “unfolded,” through diffraction-grating film and the use of mirrors, into an array of colors. The effect will be accompanied by the recorded sound of the artist breathing and humming. The only installed “object” in the pavilion will be the body of the visitor. Elaborating on the concept, Kimsooja noted, “I wish for the audience to experience a personal sensation that reveals the extremes of light and darkness, sound and soundlessness, the known and the unknown.”

Incidentally, the pavilion proposal was discussed between artist and curator during the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged the east coast of the United States in late October 2012. “Like everybody else in New York, I found it a difficult time—nevertheless a contemplative, humbling and revealing moment,” recalled Kimsooja, whose apartment lost power and heat following the disaster. Since then, the artist says she has often thought about the psychological state of the body and mind at a time when one lives in a lightless environment. “What is this fear that we have of being enveloped by complete darkness? Is it the fear of fantasy, insecurity and the unknown, which are born from our ignorance?” said the artist, adding that the blackout experience compelled her to “explore the notion of ‘darkness’ and ‘ignorance.’” At the Korea Pavilion, this concept will take the form of an anechoic chamber, which the artist likens to a black hole. “The physical and psychological dimensions of light and darkness reveal the definition of ‘light’ as ‘visual knowledge/awareness,’ and ‘darkness’—which is an extreme extension of light, and not its opposite—as ‘the unknown/ignorance.’” Light and darkness, sound and silence, awareness and the unknown, and “wrapping” and “unwrapping” are all tied into the binding, cosmic relationship of yin and yang—a notion that will be embodied in the pavilion.

Following the Venice Biennale, 2013 will continue to be a busy year for Kimsooja, who will also be completing two other commissioned projects. To Breathe – Olympics will be a single-channel video depicting the flags of 203 countries, which will become part of the permanent collection at the Olympics Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. The other work is a site-specific installation at the Mariposa Land Port of Entry in Arizona, along the Mexican border, where she will install a screen showing video portraits of immigrants living in the US. With the aim of facilitating cultural understanding and interaction, the poignant piece will continue the artist’s deconstructing of the fear of the unknown.