Performance view of 《MMCA Performing Arts 2024 Showcase》 © Suhwa Kim

Beginning this year, the MMCA Performing Arts Showcase has been newly planned to discover emerging artists and promote international exchange. Co-organized with Jacob Fabricius, Director of Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), the 2024 showcase will be presented at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in September 2024 and later at Art Hub Copenhagen in April 2025.

Participating in the showcase are four Korean artists and four Danish artists born between the late 1980s and late 1990s. Korean artists Suhwa Kim, Boma Park, Yehwan Song, and Beomgyu Choi explore the “overflowing world” of the present through relationships among technology, sensation, the self, literature, and the body.

Relentless signals and sounds, lights that remain through the night, and the infinite flow of images and texts online can overwhelm us—yet, at the intersection of fluid information and fleeting sensations, new possibilities emerge.

Suhwa Kim investigates the invisible data world and physical reality through the “Android 9707” Wi-Fi signal, illuminating tensions and gaps between network signals and the human body. Boma Park visualizes the sensation of immaterial entities—like the perception of a lemon or light—exploring how the non-existent is imagined as real through the language of advertising.

Yehwan Song materializes the fragmentation and confusion of contemporary identity through layered web pages and pop-up interfaces. Beomgyu Choi contemplates loss and absence through the misalignment of literature and the body, revealing unexpected poetic beauty in their slips.

Their works encourage us to view the “overflowing world” not as excess but as a new territory of understanding—guiding collective reflection on this generation’s response to societal change.

Performance view of 《MMCA Performing Arts 2024 Showcase》 © Suhwa Kim

Danish artists Eliya Messiahuer, Esben Weile Kjær, Philip Vest, and Miriam Kongstad work fluidly across visual arts, literature, theater, science, fashion, and music. In their practices, the “speculative body” serves as a tool to articulate the complexities of contemporary life, this era, and the spaces we inhabit.

Performance is central to their artistic methodology—whether using their own bodies or choreographing others—addressing crucial 21st-century themes such as identity, spirituality, queerness, care, sexuality, community, pain, freedom, capitalism, and desire.

Although not limited to performance, they continue to expand their practices through sculpture, installation, painting, and video, establishing new and unpredictable standards for performance-based art.

All four Danish artists will also present works at the Gwangju Biennale. Newly commissioned sculptures by Art Hub Copenhagen will be installed as site-specific works in Gwangju, connecting formally with the performances at MMCA as part of a broader sculptural component.

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