Boots Without a Body
 
At Huigyeongru in Gwangju, a path made of coffee grounds has been laid out, and brightly colored boots are placed along it. The wearer is nowhere to be seen, yet the arrangement evokes the sight of someone walking down the path. This is 《Kamiit Walking》, presented by Greenlandic artist Jessie Kleemann at the Kalaallit Illuutaat Pavilion of the 16th Gwangju Biennale. The exhibition runs through November 15, 2026.
 
Born in 1959 in Upernavik, in northwestern Greenland, Kleemann works across performance, video, installation, and poetry. Drawing on her experience of moving between Greenland and Denmark, she explores how cultural identity, tradition, the body and the land, and language change. In her work, the body is both a medium for expressing personal experience and a site where a community's history and the effects of colonialism become visible.

This work begins with the ‘kamiit’, traditional Inuit boots that the artist inherited from her family. Made of sealskin and worn over many years, the boots carry the life and movements of the people who wore them. Kleemann 3D-scanned the boots and printed them, turning them into new installation objects. According to a representative of 3D Print & Scan, who took part in producing the Gwangju exhibition, the details of the original boots were recorded digitally, and multiple replicas were then made using color-changing filament. A shoe once used in daily life reappears in new materials and colors.
 
This transformation raises the question of how to remember and carry on what we inherit. The form of the boots remains, but their material and purpose change. Shoes that once protected the body and made movement possible now become sculptures that call to mind an absent body. As the traces of everyday life on the original are carried through replication and repetition, they can be read as evoking not one person's experience but the lives and journeys of many.

Inherited History, Unseen Work
 
In her written interview with K-ARTNOW, the artist said that what we inherit is not only physical. A pair of ‘kamiit’, for example, can carry more than meets the eye: we inherit history. Viewing the work from an Inuit woman's perspective, she said, it invites us to look at the unseen work of women. Just as their ancestral foremothers did, women today walk the path and do the work, now in this world.
 
This account grounds the shoes in the concrete realities of lived experience. The boots symbolize cultural identity, but they are also objects tied to bodies that worked, moved, and kept daily life going. The heritage passed down in this work therefore includes not only a traditional form but also the acts and labor repeated to sustain life. Reproduced in vivid colors, the shoes give this history a contemporary visual form.
 
The method of production also reveals the relationship between continuity and change. Kleemann records the form of a traditional shoe with digital technology and realizes it anew in different materials, interpreting cultural heritage through present-day technology and sensibility. Through choices about what to keep and what to change, the work asks what form an inherited culture can take in today's life.
 
 
 
Whose Heritage, Whose Voice
 
This question also connects to the right of Inuit communities to interpret and express their own culture for themselves. The pavilion's introduction likewise describes the work as a matter of Inuit sovereignty and the changing Kalaallit identity. From the standpoint of cultural self-determination, the reinterpretation of the ‘kamiit’ can be understood as a practice in which members of the community express their heritage in today's language and create new meaning from it.
 
The shoes set on the path at Huigyeongru recall the past while also inviting us to imagine movement ahead. No body is inside them, yet the presence of the people who made the shoes, wore them, and lived their lives in them remains. Starting from a single pair of boots inherited from family, 《Kamiit Walking》 asks how history and labor continue in the bodies and lives of today. Along that path, viewers are invited to consider what they have inherited and what they will carry forward.

About the Artist
 
Jessie Kleemann (b. 1959) is an artist and poet born in Upernavik, Greenland, who is now based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Working across performance, video, installation, and poetry, she has explored Inuit cultural heritage and identity, women's experience, the body and nature, and the effects of colonialism. In 2023, she held a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK), and in 2024, she received the Eckersberg Medal from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
 
 
 
Exhibition Information
 
Gwangju Biennale: 《You Must Change Your Life, the 16th Gwangju Biennale》
Biennale Dates: September 5 – November 15, 2026
Pavilion: Kalaallit Illuutaat
Exhibition: Jessie Kleemann 《Kamiit Walking》
Exhibition Dates: September 5 – November 15, 2026
Venue: Huigyeongru, Gu-dong, Nam-gu, Gwangju
Admission: Free
Website: www.gwangjubiennale.org