'Miru's Adventure' book reveals Korean artist's desert life
Kim Miru shows off one of her nude self-portraits at the opening party for “The Camel’s Way” held at Trunk Gallery in Samcheong-dong, Seoul, in this March 27, 2014, photo. Her new book “Miru’s Adventure” gives a detailed account of her time in the world’s deserts. / Photo by Jon Dunbar
By Jon Dunbar
Kim Miru has been to the darkest corners of the world, seeking out experiences most of us would never imagine. From exploring catacombs beneath Paris and crawling around with pigs in a factory farm, to swimming in piranha-infested waters in South America and living as a nomad in the Arabian Desert, her bravery is unmatched.
“I may seem crazy in doing dangerous things, but I am actually very rational in calculating the risks,” she told The Korea Times. “Everything is planned out quite thoroughly. Even when I went into the water in the Amazon River, I did a lot of research on parasites and other risks. I do care a lot about my health; after all, I studied pre-med in college and worked in hospitals.”
Kim gained the art world’s attention in 2007 for her “Naked City Spleen” series of nude self-portraits taken in abandoned places, deep underground and high up on roofs mostly around New York. Her 2008 TED Talk showed she was no mere thrill-seeker. Now, almost a decade later, she releases her first book, “Miru’s Adventure.”
In the book she introduces her adventures mainly in Mali and Mongolia, with mentions of her back story and early pictures from the U.S. and Korea, including some of her famous nudes.
A book is a logical step for Kim, who’s previously shared her works through websites and art galleries.
“I traveled to deserts around the world for three years and I lived in a desert for almost two years with very little internet, never mind phone connection. It's difficult to be really into social media when you've experienced such a life, which taught me a lot about real one-to-one interaction with living beings, humans and animals included,” she said.
On her adventures, she befriended many animals, including a white camel in Egypt she bought which later died, and the “love of her life,” a desert dog named Guinness she brought back to New York.
But despite all her stories, she feels left behind in today’s social media world.
“When teenage instagrammers with gazillions of followers tell me they saw my work when they were little, it makes me feel like a granny,” she said. “I'm definitely not in the same generation as them.”
Although Kim has been known worldwide for about a decade, her fame is on another level in Korea, her birth country which she left at age 13. Here, she’s mainly known through her father, the prominent philosopher Kim Yong-ok better known as Do-ol. News articles about her are prefaced “Do-ol’s daughter…” and whenever she has an art exhibition, Korea’s mainstream media shows up in force to see father and daughter side by side.
“Since I was 13 I've lived in a different world from my father,” she said. “My relationship with my father is pretty normal, nothing out of the ordinary. He was not so thrilled about my artwork because of nudity, but he was more supportive after he saw my TED talk. My father was the first one to encourage me to publish my writings.”
Her debut book covers only the first year of her three years wandering the world’s deserts, and she plans to continue publishing books about the remainder of her desert adventures.
She’s also turned her attention to her next project, about edible insects. “The series started with facing my phobia of larvae,” she said, “but as I continued my research for a couple of years on edible insects, I realized this project could have crucial environmental implications tackling the subject of sustainable protein sources and ending world hunger.”
So far she has visited China’s Yunnan Province, Peruvian jungles and Mexico for this project.
The idea for this one came after her project “The Pig That Therefore I am,” in which she mingled naked with pigs at factory farms. “The pig project was a critique on the problems of industrial meat farming,” she said, so the edible insect project is “a natural progression to finding solutions and alternatives.”
“Miru’s Adventure” is only available in Korean presently, published by Tongnamu. It is available at Kyobo Bookstore in downtown Seoul.
Her website is mirukim.com but it contains some nudity.