FRIEZE 2025 Ru Kim presents force, fragility in shape-shifting performance

Artist Ru Kim / Courtesy of Antonia Giordano

As Frieze Seoul returns next week, galleries and collectors are preparing to converge on the city for its fourth edition. While the fair’s main floor will spotlight collectible, physical artworks, Frieze Live — the platform for performance and experimental art launched last year — returns to broaden the conversation. Among this year’s participants is Ru Kim’s multidisciplinary piece "a fist is a fist is a fist — Ignition."

Presented on Sept. 5 starting at 5 p.m. at Kukje Gallery K2 as part of a group exhibition curated by the Art Sonje Center team, the performance combines poetry, techno music and moving images into a work that feels at once intimate and expansive.

Originally performed at CHOI & CHOI Gallery in 2023, the piece is reimagined for Frieze Seoul. For Kim, who grew up in Germany, Cyprus, Korea, Canada and Brazil, the path to this stage has been one of constant shifting — across mediums, disciplines and even identities as an artist.

“I always knew that I wanted to be an artist, but the field would vary from period to period," Kim told The Korea Times. "I have wanted to be a photographer, an actor, and play in musicals and more. And before that as a child, I wanted to be a butterfly. And now as a visual artist I think I have become that through my practice.”

That sense of transformation runs through the performance. The audience is invited into Kim's environment, treating the fist not only as a clenched hand but as a kind of vessel — a form where strength and fragility, memory and tension, coexist. It is the shape of trembling and of meeting, a gesture that can dramatize or alter depending on its context. The fingers straighten and then come together, creating a space that gathers the different directions of the fingers, combining them into a temporary unit.

Artist Ru Kim / Courtesy of Antonia Giordano

In this new version, Kim is joined again by collaborators Chaieun Shin and Luna, though their roles have evolved.

"I have included more acting elements for all three performers, albeit in varying degrees, and I will be performing more in movement as well as voice. We rehearsed intensively during the month of July, and then in August we worked on our individual points to focus on," Kim said.

The fist, in this frame, is never fixed: It carries memories that are both personal and collective, so that the show is able to be shown in different ways.

Frieze Live offers a different challenge from the immersive installation settings Kim typically works in.

“It’s a group exhibition, which I would consider to be the main difference since most of my performances have been in more immersive environments," Kim said. "But I am looking forward to all the aspects that make a group show interesting. The conversations between different pieces, memories compared to other performances held in the space and, in this case, a larger audience too.”

This adaptability speaks to a larger ethos in Kim’s work — an openness to shifting roles, tools and methods depending on the context.

“Depending on the project, I am often called to learn new techniques, collaborate with professionals in unfamiliar fields and reinvent myself through portraying different characters or writing from their perspective,” Kim said.

The shape-shifting nature of these practices echoes the metaphor of the fist as something at once known and unknowable, constrained yet full of potential.

“As much as we can use our fists to strike upon surfaces or raise them in solidarity to a cause, we can also use them to shake to the rhythm of music and dance, joyfully,” the artist said.

Residencies have played a pivotal role in nurturing this artistic flexibility, providing Kim with both space and community.

“Residencies are great for focusing on work," Kim said. "When you’re surrounded by intelligent, talented and hardworking artists who also often opt not to have a routine, every moment is as much play time as it is work time.”

International programs, in particular, offer the chance for site-specific research, chance encounters and collaborations with other artists and technicians, often revealing unexpected connections. “Small world, smaller art world, it seems. I love that,” Kim said.

Even when facing creative stagnation, Kim turns to physical movement and lived experience to reconnect with the process. “I move, quite literally unsticking myself. Whether it be going to the gym, the park or the movies, I always try to remind myself that as the coexistent and entangled beings that we are, we need to let ourselves be touched.”

These reflections offer a deeper understanding of how Kim navigates the demands of a multidisciplinary practice, balancing intense preparation and experimentation with a commitment to vulnerability and change.

Artist Ru Kim performs with Chaieun Shin. Courtesy of Ru Kim

As Frieze Seoul continues to grow into a major event on the international art calendar, performances like Kim’s offer a reminder that art need not only be seen, but also felt. Inside the gallery, viewers are asked to pause and consider the fist — its force and its fragility, its everyday familiarity and its explosive potential — as something far more than a simple gesture.

Antonia Giordano is a freelance photographer and writer based in Seoul. Visit giordanoantonia.myportfolio.com and follow @antonia_creative_services on Instagram.