Fall 2023 Issue

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire:Kim Hyesoon

In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents select from the larger questionnaire, replying in as many or as few words as they desire. For the third installment of 2023, we are honored to present the poet Kim Hyesoon.

Photo: courtesy Kim Hyesoon

Kim Hyesoon has published fourteen poetry collections: From The Autobiography of Death (2016), Phantom Pain of Wings (2019), and After Earth Dies, Who Will Moon Orbit? (2022), among others. Her anthologies have been translated into many languages and she has received multiple literary prizes.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of the Serpentine, London. He was previously the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show, World Soup (The Kitchen Show), in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions. Photo: Tyler Mitchell

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Hans Ulrich ObristWhat is your most recent work?

Kim HyesoonFind my mom’s smell on a map of my country, smell my country.

HUOWhat is your unrealized project?

KHCreate my own periodic table of the elements.

HUODo you write poems?

KHI don’t write poetry. I do poetry.

HUOWhat have you forgotten?

KHMy milk teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeth.

HUOWhat is time?

KHThe desert, the rhythmic entity that pushes me into annihilation. The pain of infinite sequences.

HUOWhat is the first entry in your catalogue raisonné?

KHThe scene of my dad dying. My mom yelled at my dad in his coffin, What the fuck is this, then me yelling, What the fuck is this to my mom in her coffin.

HUOWhat is your favorite book?

KHAlways changing, but right now it’s The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector, where the main character is named Macabéa, which means Don’t die.

HUOWhat is your favorite movie?

KHAlexander Sokurov, Whispering Pages. This movie is a book.

HUOIs the mirror broken?

KHThe mirror isn’t broken yet. When the mirror is broken, there is no me, there is no you, there is no world. But when I write poetry, I enter a room without a mirror.

HUOWhy is there something rather than nothing?

KHWhy is there something rather than nothing?

Frank Stella

In celebration of the life and work of Frank Stella, the Quarterly shares the artist’s last interview from our Summer 2024 issue. Stella spoke with art historian Megan Kincaid about friendship, formalism, and physicality.

Stanley Whitney: Vibrations of the Day

Stanley Whitney invited professor and musician-biographer John Szwed to his studio on Long Island, New York, as he prepared for an upcoming survey at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum to discuss the resonances between painting and jazz.

Richard Armstrong

Richard Armstrong, director emeritus of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, joins the Quarterly’s Alison McDonald to discuss his election to the board of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, as well as the changing priorities and strategies facing museums, foundations, and curators. He reflects on his various roles within museums and recounts his first meeting with Frankenthaler.

Chris Eitel in the Kagan Design Group workshop

Vladimir Kagan’s First Collection: An Interview with Chris Eitel

Chris Eitel, Vladimir Kagan’s protégé and the current director of design and production at Vladimir Kagan Design Group, invited the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier to the brand’s studio in New Jersey, where the two discussed the forthcoming release of the First Collection. The series, now available through holly hunt, reintroduces the first chair and table that Kagan ever designed—part of Eitel’s efforts to honor the furniture avant-gardist’s legacy while carrying the company into the future.

Black and white portrait of Frida Escobedo

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Frida Escobedo

In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents select from the larger questionnaire and reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the first installment of 2024, we are honored to present the architect Frida Escobedo.

Black and white portrait of Katherine Dunham leaping in the air

Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance, 1900–1955

Dance scholars Mark Franko and Ninotchka Bennahum join the Quarterly’s Gillian Jakab in a conversation about the exhibition Border Crossings at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Cocurated by Bennahum and Bruce Robertson, the show reexamines twentieth-century modern dance in the context of war, exile, and injustice. An accompanying catalogue, coedited by Bennahum and Rena Heinrich and published earlier this year, bridges the New York presentation with its West Coast counterpart at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Black and white portrait of Maria Grazia Chiuri looking directly at the camera

Fashion and Art: Maria Grazia Chiuri

Maria Grazia Chiuri has been the creative director of women’s haute couture, ready-to-wear, and accessories collections at Dior since 2016. Beyond overseeing the fashion collections of the French house, she has produced a series of global collaborations with artists such as Judy Chicago, Mickalene Thomas, Penny Slinger, and more. Here she speaks with the Quarterly’s Derek Blasberg about her childhood in Rome, the energy she derives from her interactions and conversations with artists, the viral “We Should All Be Feminists” T-shirt, and her belief in the role of creativity in a fulfilled and healthy life.

film still of Harry Smith's "Film No. 16 (Oz: The Tin Woodman’s Dream)"

You Don’t Buy Poetry at the Airport: John Klacsmann and Raymond Foye

Since 2012, John Klacsmann has held the role of archivist at Anthology Film Archives, where he oversees the preservation and restoration of experimental films. Here he speaks with Raymond Foye about the technical necessities, the threats to the craft, and the soul of analogue film.

A person lays in bed, their hand holding their face up as they look at something outside of the frame

Whit Stillman

In celebration of the monograph Whit Stillman: Not So Long Ago (Fireflies Press, 2023), Carlos Valladares chats with the filmmaker about his early life and influences.

Francesca Woodman

Ahead of the first exhibition of Francesca Woodman’s photographs at Gagosian, director Putri Tan speaks with historian and curator Corey Keller about new insights into the artist’s work. The two unravel themes of the body, space, architecture, and ambiguity.

Jamian Juliano-Villani and Jordan Wolfson

Ahead of her forthcoming exhibition in New York, Jamian Juliano-Villani speaks with Jordan Wolfson about her approach to painting and what she has learned from running her own gallery, O’Flaherty’s.

Kelsey Lu

Art historian and curator Olivier Berggruen reflects on his trip to Berlin to see a performance by the multihyphenate Kelsey Lu. Following his experience of that performance, The Lucid, Berggruen caught up with Lu in New York, where they spoke about the visual elements of their work, dreaming, and the necessity of new challenges.

Gagosian Quarterly

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire:Kim Hyesoon