Cuppa of Samsara is a multimedia project that deals with new forms of cultural hybridity in the present by looking into the crossroads of cultures and illuminating the past in the endless loop of reincarnation. Kim’s exhibition will revitalise and recreate cultural memories, using as a starting point the records of the journey of Yi Jun, a Korean independence activist who travelled to Europe to inform the world of the treaty that was unfairly concluded during the Japanese colonial era in the 1920s.

This project visualises within the exhibition space the space of cultural creation, extinction and rebirth created by the influence of cultural imperialism and postcolonialism as relevant to Scottish and Korean histories. It reflects on the value of the inherent hybridity that is created by this process, by exposing the ways in which the past and the present are organically interwoven. As a Scottish-based Korean artist, Kim will create a cultural fusion of East and West through newly commissioned experimental music blending traditional Scottish with traditional Korean pieces, moving image work, performances, textiles and installations. Engaging with sites across the city, it will attempt to enact the artist’s journey to a new hybridity through his daily life as a Korean artist immigrant to Glasgow.

Image: Still from ‘Born Beneath (2021)’, Moving Image Work