Artist Miru Kim, known for taking breathtaking nude self-portraits among the world’s urban icons and ruins, is making a splash at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach fair with a live performance piece during which she’ll spend 104 hours living with pigs. Earlier this year, Kim debuted her newest photography series, The Pig That Therefore I Am, at New York’s Doosan Gallery. In Miami, she’s recreating the piece for not just the art fair’s attendants, but the entire world as well, with a live-streaming video of the performance.

The head-turning series juxtaposes the NYC-based artist’s nude body with those of about 300 pigs. According to Kim, the work explores the spaces and similarities between man and animal and the power of touch in our understanding of the world. In describing the piece, she wishes to offer herself up as an artist, to “see, hear and feel through art, music and poetry. I put my flayed skin on display in the form of a photo.”

The live stream, which runs through Sunday night, is accessible here: www.mirukim.com and http://68.166.116.18:86/broadcamauto.html?src=1&speed=1

A sampling of her work is below. For more info on Miru Kim, check out her website, or my interviews with her for Coolhunting.com and Clear Magazine.

After the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in northeastern Japan on March 11, power supplies, land lines, mobile phone networks and Internet access went down, making it incredibly difficult to contact family and friends. The Japanese postal service, however, was up and running again quickly. In many cases, in fact, the first news that loved ones were safe was shared by postcard.

Inspired by role of postcards–and the idea that art and culture are vital in celebrating life and nurturing determination to move forward–the Japan Society presents Postcards From Japan, a miniature exhibition of original postcard-size works of art created by 22 artists from Japan in response to the devastation. The results (see slideshow below) are poignant works that give insight into the power and resilience of the human spirit.

The show’s curators, husband and wife Hironori Katagiri and Kate Thomson, were working in their sculpture studio in Iwate when the earthquake hit. While they anxiously awaited news of loved ones on the coast, Takuya Okada, another artist who shares their studio, received a postcard from his parents saying they were alive and well. Inspired by the uplifting effect of this postcard on the whole household, they’ve since volunteered on a series of exhibitions and special projects to support recovery in Tohoku through the arts. As the couple explains, “Many arts and cultural projects in Tohoku have been canceled or cut back as funds are diverted to the relief effort. We feel that the arts and culture are in fact vital to the recovery, helping to boost morale and stimulate hope for the future and enthusiasm to rebuild.”

The traveling exhibit is on view now through November 27th at the Japan Society Gallery in New York.

Postcards from Japan
The Japan Society Gallery
333 East 47th Street between First and Second Avenues
New York, NY
www.japansociety.org

Now Showing Antibodies (Anticorpos): Fernando & Humberto Campana, 1989 – 2009.

São Paulo’s Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil welcomes Antibodies, an expansive retrospective exhibit of work by the famed design duo, Fernando and Humberto Campana. The brothers have been designing together for almost three decades, and have collaborated on everything from furniture, fashion and jewelry, to products and interiors. The pair may be best known for their playful design aesthetic and projects developed from common but often unexpected materials – including waste products like cardboard, stuffed animals, rope, fabric and wood scraps, plastic tubes, aluminum wire. As curator Mathias Schwartz-Clauss says, “Together, the brothers ignore all the conventions of the traditional design, play with the notion of functionality, and form their poetic objects from contradictory realities.”

Antibodies was first displayed at the Vitra Museum in 2009, and texts, films, photos, and hundreds of designs (furniture, domestic objects, art, architecture models, installation pieces, etc.) by the Campana Brothers. The exhibit reveals both the diversity of the pair’s work as well as their design process and sources of inspiration.

Antibodies is on display through January 15, 2012.

Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
Rua Álvares Penteado, 112 – Centro – São Paulo
Information: (11) 3113-3651 / 3113-3652

For My Quiet of Gold, Nina Gorfer and Sarah Cooper’s new exhibition at Gestalten Space in Berlin, the artistic duo traveled to rural areas of Kyrgyzstan to collect stories from local inhabitants. The pair then interpreted these often romantic and melancholy tales as carefully choreographed motifs, which were then digitally finessed. The resulting, multi-layered collages are rooted in both contemporary photography and eighteenth and nineteenth century painting.

The Gothenborg-based pair began collaborating in 2006, and also work together as directors, authors, researchers, and editorial and commercial photographers under the name SEEK.

My Quiet of Gold
at Gestalten Space, Berlin
Now through November 27th, 2011