Dew Kim turns the body into a canvas for examining the intersections of sexuality, religion, and identity. Working primarily with video, sculpture, installation, and performance, he investigates themes of queerness, BDSM, and the deconstruction of traditional notions of desire and power. By embracing processes that combine pain and pleasure, Kim examines how practices like chastity training transform sexual expression, challenging phallocentric frameworks and creating new languages of embodiment. His work is deeply informed by his upbringing as the child of a Presbyterian pastor in a conservative Seoul neighborhood, where early exposure to religious texts and teachings shaped his understanding of morality, desire, and social structures. Kim draws on these personal experiences to question societal norms and explore the tensions between cultural expectations and individual identity. Through material experimentation, often combining sculptural forms with performative gestures, Kim’s practice investigates vulnerability, control, and transformation. His work reflects on how power, sexuality, and belief intersect, offering a nuanced perspective on desire, selfhood, and the body as both a personal and cultural site of knowledge. ...
Founded in 2010 by Guillaume Sultana, Sultana collaborates with emerging international artists. The gallery space operates as a site for experimentation and expression, often bringing together well-established and lesser known artists through a playful, yet politically-engaged curatorial program that highlights practices concerned with questions of identity and their social ramifications. By giving space to curators and writers, in addition to artists, the gallery is committed to rethinking the traditional modes of exhibition-making and collaboration within the art world. In 2021, Sultana opened Sultana Summer Set Arles to convene artists, collectors, curators, and friends close to the gallery in a domestic and intimate space in the heart of the city. This space was conceived as a residency and site of exchange, to host projects angled toward creative freedom, reflection, and flânerie that eschews a regular programming schedule, and is organized instead according to the whims and desires of our community. These two spaces exemplify the spirit of Sultana: the desire to provide artists with an independent platform for expression via site-specific projects and curatorial propositions. ...
