NEW YORK CITY — Times Square is one of the most frenzied and fast-paced places in the world. Yet, beginning in March and continuing through June 10, New York-based artist Kimsooja has done the impossible — she’s made people stop and enjoy the silence.

As part of the city’s 59th Minute Video Art series, Kimsooja presents "Conditions of Anonymity," one-minute segments from her lauded video works, "A Needle Woman," "A Beggar Woman" and "A Laundry Woman," screened on the NBC Astrovision. In each video, the artist sits, reclines or stands completely still, with her back to the viewer, illuminating the intensity of the locales and the intrusions of the world around her.

"These were already existing pieces that I had done and was very proud of, and they were interested in them because it creates a complete contrast against what Times Square is all about; a silence in a melting pot of desire," the 47-year-old artist explains. "They also asked me to do a performance along with it, and since I didn’t want to simply repeat the same performance in front of the video, I found a solution."

Artist Kimsooja is videotaped sitting, reclining or standing, with her back to the camera, in her works “A Needle Woman,”...

Kimsooja dispatched a group of 40 performers to take up meditative poses symbolic of begging and homelessness amidst the bustling crowds, without acting or reacting. These complement Kimsooja’s video work, which capture her own still figure among the masses in various world locations, her hand outstretched or lying prone on the ground.

"I would describe my art as multimedia, as I work with installation, sound, lighting, sewing and video performance," she says. "I think performance art is fascinating because it gives you a new way of expression, and it always grows as you are working."

Kimsooja was born in 1957 in Daegu, South Korea. Her father was a general in the military and her mother adhered to the traditional role women played in the country at the time. Her upbringing is very influential in her artwork, as there are many elements of Korean culture poetically interwoven throughout.

"We were moving from one place to another all the time and that constant moving situation influenced my work," she says. "I grew up in a Catholic family, but Korean families also are dominated a lot by Confucianism in daily life, [and] I always had a little bit of Buddhism, a little bit of shamanism. It was quite a complicated background."

“A Beggar Woman”...

She discovered a love for art early in life, enjoying her elementary school art activities above all else.

"I remember one teacher asking us to write two occupations we wished to have in the future, and I wrote down ‘painter’ and ‘philosopher,’" Kimsooja says. "I think being an artist is also doing philosophy, so I have always had these interests."

Her art schooling began in Korea and she graduated from the painting department of Hong-Ik University in Seoul in 1984. She then received a scholarship from the Lithography studio at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and studied in France for a year.