The National Museum of
Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA, Director Kim Sunghee) announced on
the 24th that it has selected four individuals (or teams) as the sponsored
artists for the "Korean Artist Prize 2025," co-hosted with the SBS Cultural
Foundation: Kim Young Eun, Kim Jipyeong, Unmake Lab, and Im Youngzoo.
The "Korean Artist
Prize" is a major annual exhibition initiated by MMCA in 2012 and is one
of the most representative art awards in the contemporary Korean art scene.
Each year, four sponsored artists are selected and given the opportunity to create
new works and present them in an exhibition, with the aim of discovering new
discourses.
MMCA Director Kim
Sunghee stated, "Since 2012, MMCA, with the support of the SBS Cultural
Foundation, has selected leading Korean artists annually and introduced their
practices widely, thereby expanding the base of Korean art," and added, "This
year as well, we will present a dynamic arena created by artists with original
thematic consciousness across diverse media."
The four selected
artists for the "Korean Artist Prize 2025" are actively working both
domestically and internationally in various media, including video,
installation, sculpture, and VR.
Kim Young Eun has
developed a practice that considers sound and listening as political and
historical products and actions. She explores how sound and listening are
constructed and technologically developed within specific historical contexts,
and what possibilities listening offers in the production of knowledge and
processes of decolonization.
Kim Jipyeong has
critically interpreted the traditional worldview and modes of perception
embedded in the concept and techniques of "Oriental painting."
Through this, she contemplates the realities of the division of Korea, women’s
bodies, nature, and planets from a perspective outside of Western-centered
modernity. Recently, she has focused on reactivating the meanings of
traditional formats such as folding screens, hanging scrolls, and albums in
contemporary language.
Unmake Lab is a
collective formed in 2016 by Choi Bitna and Song Sooyeon. Since 2020, they have
intersected Korea’s developmentalist history with elements of artificial
intelligence (datasets, computer vision, generative neural network
technologies) and focused on reconfiguring current social and ecological
conditions into speculative landscapes.
Im Youngzoo has observed
the processes through which superstition, belief, and religious faith are
formed and received in Korean society, and conveyed them through complex
experiences and media (video, installation, performance, VR, and books). The
path through which natural elements such as stones, gold, rocks, wind, and
birds become objects of belief is far removed from certainty and rationality.
According to MMCA, the
jury for the "Korean Artist Prize" is newly composed each year,
including international members, to reflect diverse perspectives in the
evolving art environment and to increase sustained interest in Korean art.
The first-round jurors
for the "Korean Artist Prize 2025" include: Emily Pethick (Director
of Rijksakademie, Netherlands), Jordan Carter (Curator at Dia Art Foundation,
USA), Gridthiya Gaweewong (Artistic Director at Jim Thompson Art Center, Thailand),
Kim Jangeon (former Director of Art Sonje Center), Ahn Soyeon (Director of
Atelier Hermès), Kim Sunghee (MMCA Director, ex officio), and Woo Hyunjung
(Curator, ex officio). The final jury will consist of the remaining six members
excluding the curator.
The final recipient of
the "Korean Artist Prize 2025" will be announced through public
talks, including "Artist & Jury Dialogue," and the final judging
after the exhibition opens on August 29 and continues into January next year.
