Minkyeong Kim
One another
“How would we sort things out? Canid, hominid; pet, professor; bitch, woman; animal, human; athlete, handler…. Each of these names designates a racial discourse, and we both inherit their consequences in our flesh.”
I consider my work as an ongoing love affair with dogs. The bonds that develop strike me as unique, from my own perspective. This togetherness between the two species, and how this mutually symbiotic relationship develops, is intriguing to me. The focus of my project began as a sense of the sentient nature of dogs. Like us, the dog has its own personality and a mutually interdependent relationship can exist between the two. It intrigued me that humans are not the only sentient beings, and that other species are capable of a subjective existence based on sentience too.
My journey this year is about my encounter with dogs that I came across as I was travelling through Thailand and Cambodia. I saw many street dogs and every one was different; they all came across to me as unique and individual beings. They all had their own little ways of living in their village home. The dogs on the streets, whether they were big, small, black or white, seemed to somehow adapt to each other with their own ways of life; going wherever they wished to go and doing whatever they wished to do. I always had to put myself in a lower position by kneeing down or sitting on the ground to take photographs of these dogs on the street. Most of them would come and sniff me with their nose first. When a dog I have just meet puts his nose close to my face and licks my face, I feel happy.
