KIMBERLEE KOYM-MURTEIRA
Walking Away (Water Ceremony), 2022, still from video, print on metal
Kimberlee Koym-Murteira is an Oakland-based multimedia artist who centres her practice on ideas of embodiment and physical presence in the world. Relationships between ourselves and nature, the space around us, the time of day, momentous events, and the seasons are captured in a range of video, sculpture, dance, installation, and music. She often collaborates with artists and performers who focus on meditation and healing practices, and as a teacher, works with students to envision ways that art can translate physical, emotional, and spiritual experience into new ways of seeing. Independent curator and WTM mentor Kate Mothes met with Koym-Murteira in November on Zoom to discuss ideas around perception, presence, memory, and her most recent project Unseen to Seen, which collaboratively explored responses to the pandemic.
Kate Mothes: There's a lot of research that goes into your work. And probably, I'm assuming from teaching, there's an element of constantly gleaning information as you’re working with students.
Kimberlee Koym-Murteira: I actually did a lot of the [plaster] casting and different things with students for the Unseen to Seen project. So that was a chance to break my practice into my teaching, which I've been trying to do more and more.
The framework [of my practice] is really the idea of embodiment, like, how are we physically present? That arches over like everything. In our emails, you were asking about the perception. And perception is actually like an embodiment tool. I really think that a lot of us become artists because we need a meditation system. And art, for me, it's like a moving meditation system.
Anyway, I got to teach this embodiment art class and did some of the practices that I’d just done by myself, but with a larger group. So I see that's kind of a thing that I would like my practice to grow into: getting to do kind of social art practice with larger groups, like doing body-casting or different embodiment practices. That's all very art-related. You know, ‘Is that embodiment?’
Shadow Gesture, 2022, interactive projection
One of the words I thought was really interesting that you use in your statement is ‘somatic’ and somatic connections. We were just speaking about embodiment and that relationship between the physical and other kinds of personal experience—whatever that means—whether it's sort of emotional or spiritual, or the sense of the virtual even. I was just curious if you wanted to introduce how you look at that, the somatic in your work.
Yeah, I began as an artist because I naturally was focusing on these physical processes of making. And also, because I was really into nature. I spent a lot of time on the land that my family had [in Texas] and experiencing the physical environment, like how I centered my body. It’s really intuitive; I had no idea that this was happening. But it's also just about fun, and it's like, fun in the swimming pool, fun on the ranch, and fun with the animals.
But it's all really a somatic experience that takes you out of your brain. For me, it just began this process of me being a maker and then moving through the whole world. And I think that I've been trying to figure out embodiment for most of my life, but just in the last five or six years, I started doing dance as a practice, and then they had the language for it.
As artists, yeah, that's kind of what we're doing a lot of times. And I find that's one of the reasons why it's so hard to verbalize for some artists what you're doing, because it's such a physical and intuitive process. So for me, it was really hard to ever come to, like, ‘What does this mean?’
Would you find you’re connecting to other people through what viewers see and how they perceive or interact with what you're showing?
Yeah, so, I think it's like being invited into an experience. I was doing that with video installation and sound and moving water. But now I'm having people cast their body, and as they make a physical cast, then I'm also having them tell a story about how that connects to who they are. Sometimes someone is moving from an injury or something. Like, the exhibit was about the pandemic. And reconnection.
Gestures Toward Touch, 2022, plaster casts, dimensions variable. Installation from Unseen to Seen, photo by Gary Soto
I think it's really interesting that this universal experience around the globe, the pandemic, was a thing that everybody was aware of, but still, that personal effect that it could have on you or how whether—some people were kind of like, wow, that was a nice break, but for some people, it was extremely devastating, so there’s a whole spectrum. That’s a really interesting lens to look through with the type of work that you're doing, because there is very much a range of those connections between the physical and experience and emotion and trauma.
Yeah, I got a grant to make a project with women, and I didn't really intend to use embodiment practices. I didn't really know the direction that it was going to take. But then, yeah, it just centered in on the pandemic, which made a lot of sense. I would love to now make those hands into like, big public sculpture.
I guess in some ways I feel like an art doula. Like a mourning art doula. Have you heard about death doulas? I don't think that all my work is about mourning, but there is definitely something that, during the pandemic… it's like giving people the chance to honestly process their emotions. I think making a public sculpture to the pandemic, it's something that I think is a really good idea, but I don't know yet where to take it. But it was really just amazing to see the students—also that we started this semester online and to then be doing a physical process. So that was also the thing of the virtual and physical. I've always had a thing for the virtual and the physical because I'm, like, really into video, really into sound and light.
You studied Scenography at Central Saint Martins in London, and I was just curious about that because you work in video and projection, and so I was curious if there was a connection there, if you've always been interested in video?
Yeah, so I was a theater major in undergraduate, which actually I'm really grateful for because all the artists have to figure everything out [on their own]. I got out of school, and I had a job painting. Immediately, there were just creative jobs. I went to that school for scenography, which was kind of like set design. So then I had worked in the film industry between them, and so I think that from being around cameras all the time, video allowed me to make my own theatrical performances. It just felt really natural. I'm really into collage, so it was like a collage art form to do video.
You make big projections and the space is interesting, or you're putting it through water in a jar. Like the kind of fisheye or orb-shaped lens. There's that element of kind of challenging how we're seeing that and how we're coming at it.
So, again, I think I've been using this embodiment language my whole life, but I think I just found, you know, the explanation. It’s like creating the sensory experiences and it’s all about how do we activate our perception systems and really be present or really connect with material? The material being the content, the ideas. And also just, like, matter.
Giving Space to Store Loss, 2018, video sculpture with glass jar, tablet, water, and plaster, 12 x 18 x 12 inches
I was thinking about the Mason jars and the idea of a jar being a vessel relating to the body, which especially the female body being kind of metaphorical as a vessel. I'm sure this has crossed your mind! What led you to using jars specifically or that idea of a container?
I began the light experiments with water bottles in front of video playing, but then I was actually pregnant! When I began a more serious series of vessels that had light and video in them as sculptural items, I think the fact that I was a vessel, and then it was, too… it has to be related. Then, when I really started putting videos in the jars, I had this video of my grandmother, who’s been one of my top people in the world, and it was a video of her making Christmas dinner. So I just thought, oh, look, I can put my grandma in a jar and take her down off the shelf anytime I need a dose of her. I can just store this in this jar! The videos were projected through water, and now they’re becoming objects to play with.
It seems your work was bit more video- and media-related earlier, but you're kind of finding new uses for some of those materials you've discovered along the way.
I think I've always gone back and forth and I can't give up the material real. And, again, I think that that's the embodiment conversation. I'm really invested in [the idea of], how are we physically present? Because I've kind of always struggled to be like, I am here, in charge of myself. So, I’m talking about physical presence in a really material way, and all the sentimentality, and all the different things that come with, like, the quality of physical objects.
That raises the question, when you're talking about dance or theater, we have a tendency to put things into those categories that, like, if you're using the body in this way, then it is called dance. Where does it become, say, ‘fine art’, so to speak? When you start using objects and kind of translating things in different ways, do you find that you're interested in those boundaries?
Yeah, I'm interested in blurring those boundaries, definitely. I don't know what your graduate program was like, but the theater program that I was in had really no boundaries on that. So that's how I think I started going like, oh, I think I want to be a fine artist. In that program, I didn't have to ‘be’ anything.
Bedroom Soliloquy: Women Not on Fire, 2021, still from video, print on metal
Do you find that memory plays a big part, or even nostalgia to some extent, in some of the subjects that you're exploring?
Yeah, I think that also has to do with the perception. And also maybe the struggle, right? Like we struggle to be in the present and just like to be like, okay, we're good, we're having a great day. Look, nothing is falling apart on this body, but somehow it can be mentally, like, traumatizing on myself or going into the worst memory ever. So it's like the way that we get pulled into one world from another so easily, and it is hard to just be like, ‘You know what? Actually, I'm good at the moment’.
That's part of the conversation. And also wanting to be with my grandmother, right? We all have these experiences, these people who really matter to us. In a way, she seems really universal, like this old person cooking for you. Everybody can kind of relate to the warmth of that.
Absolutely. Case in point when you mention that, my mind immediately went to my grandmother cooking Christmas dinner, too. I think it evokes certain connections and emotions, which is really a powerful base.
From there, then, with the wildfires that were in California, I was wanting to try to preserve parts of people's house that they had lost, because it was just devastating that huge amounts of land were just demolished so quickly, and so many homes were lost. There’s the climate change and then all this human grief. My aim was to kind of preserve whatever the person was interested in preserving. I ended up actually filming footage of the fires, shooting it, and then projecting it through water.
After I was doing it, I realized that it was just a way of being with the destruction and making it into a physical process that made it easier, like, you know, walking alongside it. I think that moved out of… that it was too hard to get footage of people. It felt too invasive to ask them to talk about their house, but this way of just remaking the event.
PROJECTING FIRE THROUGH WATER, 2018, gif animation from the video
For your most recent project, Unseen to Seen, there was an element of actually going out into the surroundings, walking around, and taking in the environment. I was curious if you've been in Oakland for a while, if you're viewing it differently than when you just arrived?
I’ve been in the Bay Area probably about 20 years now, and in the East Bay about 18 of those. I did make these really funny videos of nature scenes. Did you see the 360-degree videos of like, me walking in the forest? I guess somebody else might consider them more creepy, but I think they have a lot of humor—in a maybe existential kind of way. But yeah, I'm really familiar with a lot of the nature around here.
Over time, has teaching or working with students has impacted how you view your work?
Yeah, I definitely think so. I think that I feel more active with my artwork from doing the teaching, and then I also feel like I need time just for my artwork. I’ve taught for over ten years now, I think almost 14. It's gone from teaching technical skills to how I can discuss a project with them. One time, we were working on a project about how California College of the Arts's campus was going to move to San Francisco. They were leaving this beautiful, 100-year old campus behind to go work in urban land. I made all the students make a project about the trees that were going to get it cut down. It was kind of like my own project because I'm really into the environment and trees and I was just so mad about this change and how much they were losing—to be going from this environment that feeds your artistic practice to being in an urban kind of blight zone. They sold the old building to a developer. It was just such a tragedy and I thought, let's make a project with the students to discuss actual problems that are going on.
Instructions for Life: Pay attention, Be Astonished, Tell About It, 2020, video still. (Title is an excerpt from Mary Oliver's poem ‘Sometimes’)
Are you working on anything at the moment or developing anything new?
I have a two-prong answer! I made a project with my dance leader, Sylvie Minot, and she does this conscious dance process, which is like, five rhythms. Have you heard of ecstatic dance? It's kind of like people doing yoga or mindfulness. It's got a lot of the same principles, and that's her practice, right? Sylvie was a mentor for making that work. I was thinking, how can I involve the students and make it the most meaningful to them? And kind of wanting to use ritual, but not really. Like, I'm like, I'm an artist; I don't want to claim to make a ritual, but maybe I want to make rituals in the future! I am kind of borderline on some of those ideas.
I was having Sylvie help me figure out how to do that, and the music for the project was made by someone she's worked with before at dance and at healing circles. It's all matched together. I would like to apply for another grant with Sylvie to maybe use these embodiment things and to use dance as a way to work with different communities.
And then, I have a friend who is an artist and musician and we recently did this casting project together that was just really personal. We actually both chose to cast our ankles, like our lower leg! That's turning into the project that I'm working on right now. I just happened to know some performance artists, and I'm like, oh, what does it mean to make body casts of a lot of performance artists? They're all these famous people in the Bay Area who maybe I'm just getting to know personally, and they have such an outgoing and exuberant process. It's like, ‘Can you come and make really quiet work with me?’ It's really interesting to me.
Originally from Northeast Wisconsin, Kate Mothes is an independent contemporary art writer and organizer based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
