WOOJAE KIM
120hz (for you who have taught me to think about the world I am passing on)
7 NOVEMBER 2026 - 16 JANUARY 2027
SAAG EXPRESS | 1409 MAYOR MAGRATH DR S

In Woojae Kim’s installation I Hear a Silent Dissonance (2024), he taught himself to make and play percussive instruments inspired by Korean untangle (풀이) rituals. According to the tradition, unusual weather patterns such as long droughts are considered the consequence of having an imbalanced relationship with one’s ecosystem. During the ritual, a gradually accelerating percussive rhythm cultivates physical and energetic synchronicity, with intention to restore social and ecological balance.

The intensification of fire weather catalysed this project. Coming into contact with wildfire and its aftermath in British Columbia compelled Kim to pay closer attention to the dissonance of the phenomena. In the text that accompanies the work, he writes:

Listen to the thickness of the hide.
Listen to the contractions of muscles.
Listen to the volume of air in the drum.
Listen to the tension of the cord pulling the hide.
Listen to the texture of the wood.
Listen to the porousness of burnt trees.

The intelligence of taste, touch, smell and hearing is central to the artist’s practice. He is curious about what these senses perceive that vision overlooks. For Kim, learning about the construction of percussive forms and experimenting with how to play them are means of embodied listening. Through improvisation, he explores how subtle changes in breath, posture, and gesture affect an instrument’s feedback, which in turn impresses on other players and influences the rhythm.

For his new work 120Hz (for you who have taught me to think about the world I am passing on) (2026), Kim expands upon I Hear a Silent Dissonance by listening to electricity, which is one of the most ubiquitous yet under-acknowledged sounds in our environment. The audible vibration produced by a 60Hz electrical cycle is the hum of productivity and consumption. It encourages us to work through darkness, spoils us with goods from all over the world, and overwhelms us with access to information. It is a sound that our behaviour produces, and that has a detrimental effect on us and all living beings. In his text for the show, he writes,

It is the smallest increase in mic input
That triggers a feedback loop.
It will drive speakers to destructive output,
And load all the air in the room.

Resonant bodies are moved
By what they hear,
And return it louder.

For the exhibition, Kim experiments with the conditions of this behavioural noose by establishing a closed auditory loop between an amplified 120Hz drone and handmade percussive instruments. In the processing circuit, variable opportunities arise for gestures made within the gallery to modify the signal. 120Hz is a spatial meditation on the impact of our habits and the reverberations they generate. 

Woojae Kim: 120hz (for you who have taught me to think about the world I am passing on) was previously presented at Pale Fire, Vancouver from September 17 to October 17, 2026.

• Exhibition Text by: Amy Kazymerchyk

• Curated by: Adam Whitford, Curator & Exhibitions Manager

• Lead Preparator: Arianna Richardson

Woojae Kim is a Korean artist and writer living on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, Canada). His works explore rituals of interdependency and listening to inaudible frequencies of relationships with non-humans and the land.

His work has recently been exhibited in Vancouver (Artspeak, Dreams Comma Delta, Afternoon Projects), Toronto (The Plumb) and New York (Psychic Readings*). His texts have been published in the Canadian Art and the Capilano Review. Kim received an MFA from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

The Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin acknowledges the support of the City of Lethbridge, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.