Hyundai Motor Group
announced on the 18th (Wednesday) that on the 17th (Tuesday, local time) it
named the Grand Prix winner of the “6th VH Award” and opened an exhibition of
the finalists’ works at its partner institution, the House of Electronic Arts
(HEK) in Basel, Switzerland, a center dedicated to media art.
Launched in 2016
and now in its tenth year, the VH Award is a competition established by Hyundai
Motor Group to discover next-generation media artists and support their
artistic challenges and growth. Since the 4th edition, the award has expanded
from a domestic to a global scope, growing into a platform that supports media
artists who explore Asian contexts across diverse genres—video art, film,
games, animation, and motion graphics.
This year’s Grand
Prix went to Beijing-born artist and technologist Wendi Yan, who, in
addition to the USD 25,000 production grant awarded last September, receives an
additional USD 25,000 (approximately KRW 34 million) to support her next
project, along with the opportunity to exhibit at global art institutions.
Yan’s new
work, Dream of Walnut Palaces, which reinterprets
18th-century knowledge exchange between Asia and Europe through
computer-generated imagery (CGI), earned high praise from the jury and was
selected for the Grand Prix.
The five-member
international jury—Christl Baur (Director, Ars Electronica
Festival), Sabine Himmelsbach (Director, House of Electronic
Arts), Martin Honzik (artist), Sook-Kyung Lee (Director,
The Whitworth Art Gallery), and Roderick Schrock (Curator and
Director, Eyebeam)—commended the Grand Prix work for its “meticulous research
and diasporic perspective [1],” “alternative narrative grounded in a creative
worldview on history and science,” and “outstanding visual expression using 3D
modeling and artificial intelligence, coupled with an original soundscape.”
Ahead of the Grand
Prix announcement, Hyundai Motor Group also presented a one-week public showing
of the finalists’ new works at HEK starting Monday, June 16.
The newly unveiled
works probe the complexities of contemporary society, addressing fresh
perspectives on history, myth, technology, and human identity. Notably, the
exhibition coincided with Art Basel week, drawing significant
attention from the global art community.
The 6th VH Award
finalists’ new works included, alongside Yan’s piece:
— Lêna Bùi, dream(machine, human), which explores
a nonlinear narrative about humans and machines;
— HUDA x MUNGOMERY (collective), Within
Tirta, which questions ecological urgency and the sacrifices required
for nature’s sustainability through the Indonesian legend of Princess
Mandalika;
— Tianyi Sun & Fiel Guhit (collective), 40
Epochs, which presents a semi-fictional cross-section of identity in
the age of AI, spiritual wandering, and the invisible labor produced by
humanoid technologies;
— Inhwa Yeom, War Dance, which addresses complex
relations around Asian women’s production and reproduction, love and care,
using Korea’s Bulgae eclipse folktale [2] and natural phenomena as
motifs.
On the day of the
Grand Prix announcement, the five finalist teams joined jurors Sabine
Himmelsbach and Sook-Kyung Lee for a related program discussing
their new works.
The five works
premiered in Basel will be shown sequentially from the 18th (Wednesday)
at Vision Hall within Hyundai Motor Group’s Human Resources
Development Center, Mabuk Campus, and at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.
In September, they will be presented at Austria’s Ars Electronica
Festival in Linz, and during Singapore Art Week next January
through a partnership exhibition with the National Arts Council Singapore,
among other ongoing presentations at global art institutions.
A Hyundai Motor
Group representative stated, “The finalists of the 6th VH Award shed new light
on Asia at the boundaries of human and machine, past and future, reality and
virtuality, and individual and collective identity. The VH Award will continue
to evolve as a distinctive platform that spotlights diverse discourses grounded
in transcultural and transhistorical perspectives amid Asia’s rapidly changing
realities.”
Since 2014, Hyundai
Motor Group has continuously pursued differentiated arts patronage to support
the cultural ecosystem, including mid- to long-term partnerships with global
arts institutions and competitions for artists and curators.
[1] Diasporic
perspective: a viewpoint that explores issues of migration and identity.
[2] Bulgae folktale: a Korean myth explaining solar and lunar
eclipses.
