Ellen Yeon Kim: Primordial Soup
Peter Mertes Stipendium

September 10 – October 30, 2022

Opening: Friday 9 September, from 7pm

Primordial Soup – Peter Mertes Stipendium

It was a terrible century:
consisting of blasted
oil refineries and stuck ducks,
fish with their lips sealed by plastic
and tar in the hair of cooks.
Filth had penetrated the vents.

Institutions moan.
Balls of used cotton
from the hospital dumpster, redden.
Yawning on obsolescence
the computer wonders

who punched in such poor grammar.
First-padded virgins
graduate to this suffering drama
all by her-selves.
Who once were cells.*

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with contributions by Aislinn McNamara, Ellen Yeon Kim and Vera Palme.

Kim is the 2021 Peter Mertes Stipend recipient. The Stipend was founded in 1985 and annually awards two emerging artists in the Rheinland with a 12-month working grant, an exhibition and associated publication at Bonner Kunstverein.

*Excerpt from Fanny Howe, A Hymn, 2010

Ellen Yeon Kim, Primordial Soup, Peter Mertes Stipendium, installation view, Bonner Kunstverein, 2022. — Ellen Yeon Kim, *Primordial Soup,* Peter Mertes Stipendium, installation view, Bonner Kunstverein, 2022.