k-art in berlin
Go where Suah Im’s Bear Woman goes.
Having spent over a decade in Germany, most of it in Stuttgart, Suah Im’s move to Berlin marked an introspective return to unfamiliarity. Despite her years abroad, she found herself once again contending with the sensation of being a stranger in a foreign land.
Eventually, artists and curators reached out, initiating conversations that opened space for new relationships to gel. Significant others supported her as she reoriented herself amidst displacement, igniting a process of negotiation that remains central to her transnational practice.
Working primarily through installation while incorporating drawing, video, performance, and kinetic objects, Suah subverts fixed categorizations. Each medium functions as a greater whole, at times standing alone while also merging into more immersive terrains. What remains constant is the role of drawing, through which subconscious impulses surface and intersect with conscious reflection, allowing Suah’s ideas to interact before taking on material form.
Traversing cultures has impacted Suah’s sense of identity, with the question of Ich (I) arising as a transient construct shaped by context, language, and lived experience. This inquiry is further enriched by her engagement with Korean mythology alongside Taoist and Buddhist thought.
Within this spiritual landscape, the figure of the bear takes on particular significance. In Berlin, the bear is a familiar emblem, embedded in the city’s character. In Korean tradition, it also appears as a foundational figure, most notably in the story of Ung-nyeo, or the bear-woman. This duality is explored in Bear Woman on Third Planet (2023), a video installation that combines analog drawings, studio footage, filmed scenes from Tierpark in Berlin, and additional performative elements. Here, the figure of the bear-woman roams the gaps between home and away, human and animal, care and violence, never once retreating into a palattable single origin. A related scenario matures in Disappeared Bear Woman Schnah (2023), set within the Bärenzwinger, a former site of animal confinement now repurposed for artistic production.
Suah’s exhibitions in Berlin, including her presentations at EIGEN+ART Lab and SOMA Berlin, have provided yet more opportunities to test broader questions of movement and change. Her current participation in the Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt continues this trajectory, offering the practical and interpersonal resources needed to share the realities of inhabiting multiple selves, and liberate the tensions between belonging and estrangement that continue to define her life.
