21/08/2026
Curator in Residence
Sun Kim
Here is a video with Sun Kim, who took part in the Curator-in-Residence programme at basis in 2026. During her residency from February to March, she and Larry Bonćhaka developed the concept for a workshop called SOMETHINGS SMELL OF.
Sun Kim is a curator, performance director, and researcher exploring how memories, sensibilities, and narratives — shadowed by the “logic of light” of Western rationality and male-centred thought — continue to haunt and possess the present. Rather than presenting these shadows as objects of exhibition, she develops a curatorial approach in which performance and sound guide audiences to artworks within a narrative, leading them along a performative path to encounter the ghostly spatio-temporality of shadowed memories, sensibilities and narratives on a bodily level. This practice extends into the collaborative activities of the art collective (O)Kamemochi, which she founded.
The workshop explored scent as a language through which silenced memories and histories of care linger within the body and re-emerge through sensory experience. Taking the experiences of migrant care workers, particularly Korean nurses who migrated to Germany around 1960-70s as a point of departure, the workshop traced emotions and embodied memories that remain outside archives. Through multisensory experiences involving sound, touch, and the act of smelling, participants followed the traces of scent, weaving together their own memories with those of others. In this process, scent was proposed as a sensory and intimate archive that resonated within the body, carrying histories of care, labour, migration, and memories extending across generations.
video & cut: Soley Bärmann
