A new immersive body of work from acclaimed Oslo-based Korean artist Kim Hankyul that weaves kinetic sculptures with the sonic symbolism of rain as they explore the complexity of image-making and belief.
Art of Making God examines the origins of belief systems through the soundscape of rainmaking, unfinished idols, histories of sacrifice, and the human labour required to sustain faith and power. The title is borrowed from The Art of Making God, a short documentary by Chintan Malhotra, which follows Indian artisans who make religious idols as their daily livelihood for communities who worship them.
The film narrates:
“Some communities have a full-time job of making god. They wake up, mix clay, lift their tools, and by noon god has a face”
“Without the god-makers, faith would be abstract. Maybe belief needs a body. Maybe imagination needs clay. Maybe survival needs both”
Beginning from this proposition, Kim Hankyul connects the work to ancient rainmaking rituals by the soundscape of rain and the forest. The visual form of the work is constructed from materials chosen for their sonic timbre to generate sound of rain, out of friction and collision.
Traditionally performed during periods of severe drought across many parts of Asia, rainmaking rituals often functioned as a symbolic gesture of political authority, in which rulers sought to affirm their legitimacy through the ability to communicate with the God. Powered by solar energy, the installation completes a cycle that begins and ends with nature, passing through systems of labour, power, surrender, and belief.
Installed in a deliberately unfinished state, the exhibition foregrounds the act of making rather than the finished, sacred objects. It proposes belief not as a fixed truth, but as a material and political process that is continually constructed, sustained, and performed.