Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

An’s recent solo exhibitions include 《COSMIC SENSE: XR Simulation for Humankind of the Future》 (Coreana Museum of Art, Seoul, 2022), 《Iridium Age: Making New KIN》 (Seongbuk Children’s Museum, 2021), 《KIN in the shelter》 (Artist Residency Temi, Daejeon, 2019), 《Lazy teleport》 (Art Space Jungmiso, Seoul, 2016), and more.

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

An also has participated in numerous group exhibitions, such as 《Project Hashtag 2023》 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul, 2023), Digital Art Festival Taipei 2023 《A-Real Engine》 (Digital Art Center, Taipei, 2023), 《Future Fantastic》 (Art Center Nabi, Seoul, 2022), 《The Most Brilliant Moments for you》 (Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, 2022), 《ONOOOFF》 (Busan Museum of Art, Busan, 2021), and Gwangju Media Art Festival 《Algorithmic Society》 (National Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, 2018).

Awards (Selected)

An has received a prestigious awards, including the Emerging Female Artist, 15th Gender Equality and Culture of the Year Award in 2022.

Residencies (Selected)

An has been selected as an artist-in-residence at the SeMA Nanji Residency (2025), MMCA Residency Changdong (2023), MMCA Residency Goyang (2022), and more.

Collections (Selected)

An’s works are part of the collections of the Daejeon Museum of Art, the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, the Seo-Seoul Museum of Art, the Embassy of the Republic of Korea to the Republic of South Africa. 

Originality & Identity

Media artist An Gayoung has focused on the social inequalities that arise in digital environments, particularly those located at the intersection of gender and technology. The Hermes’s Box (2016–2018) metaphorically reenacts the experiences of women and minorities within internet culture through the themes of information transmission and distortion, exploring possibilities of escape and resistance within virtual space.

In Worlding (2018), she expands the theme of “world-making,” constructing a simulation centered on emotional thinking and non-competitive survival strategies, thereby subverting the competition- and achievement-oriented logic of traditional game narratives. It is notable in that it transforms a technology-based narrative structure into a communal, non-heroic worldview.

21C Cyber Body Liberation Manifesto (2020) foregrounds the issue of gender and bodily objectification in the network society, critically contrasting the ideals of early cyberfeminism with present-day conditions through cyborg characters. The work reminds us that technological progress does not necessarily equate to liberation, and instead exposes the structures of surveillance and commodification.

In KIN in the shelter (2021) and Children of the Hiion : Receive our souls (2023), An explores the potential for companionship with beings that lie at the boundary of human and non-human, biological and mechanical. These works propose a post-anthropocentric sensibility and a new ethics of community, forming sustainable narratives of coexistence and employing science-fictional imagination as a tool for critical practice.

Style & Contents

An Gayoung primarily employs interactive video game formats based on game engines such as Unity3D, inviting viewers to participate directly in the worlds of her works. The Hermes’s Box integrates custom joysticks, sensors, and physical boxes to construct a hybrid experience that moves fluidly between online and offline environments, visually and aurally rendering mechanisms of information distortion and transmission.

Worlding builds a simulation in which the environment shifts according to the player’s gaze, with characters evolving and exchanging perspectives. This content expands into an ontological experiment based on indeterminacy and autonomy, forming a non-linear, organic narrative.

21C Cyber Body Liberation Manifesto adopts a machinima video format based on game avatars, deconstructing and reconfiguring the codes, gestures, and languages traditionally associated with female characters in digital media. This work disrupts gendered game narratives through linguistic spells and visual hybridity, exploring the possibilities of technological subjectivity.

Works such as KIN in the shelter, Dummy Simulation (2022), and COSMIC SENSE: XR Simulation for Humankind of the Future (2022) experiment with long-play simulations, web-based text games, and XR performances. These technological platforms function as experimental spaces that test non-hierarchical relationships between users and digital beings, exploring the affective presence of virtual entities.

Topography & Continuity

An Gayoung’s practice, which experimentally reconstructs the structural inequalities of contemporary society through interactive game-based storytelling, represents a key case in Korean digital feminist art. Her early attention to information distortion and gender imbalance has expanded to include the intersections of non-human life, technology, and the environment, giving shape to a uniquely layered digital worldview.

The system-based narratives initiated in The Hermes’s Box have evolved through works like Worlding, KIN in the shelter, and COSMIC SENSE: XR Simulation for Humankind of the Future into increasingly decentralized and autonomous world structures. In this progression, the artist constructs a simulation aesthetics that exceeds mere user intervention, proposing complex frameworks that draw viewers into ontological participation.

Currently, An is invited to major exhibitions and residencies both domestically and abroad. Her unique forms combining science-fictional worldviews with digital technologies continue to attract attention in and beyond the art world. In an era marked by the proliferation of tech-based art and the rise of metaverse and AI discourse, her work goes beyond critique to function as a testbed for imagining future coexistence and alternative communities.