The Korean digital artist Ayoung Kim, known for using cinematic techniques and video-game engines to build vast interactive environments, has won the third LG Guggenheim Award. The annual prize, awarded by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the multinational electronics company LG, recognises artists doing important and innovative work at the intersection of art and technology. It comes with an unrestricted $100,000 honorarium and a future public programme at the museum.
“What artists can do with technology is explore the uncertain possibilities it may conceal and deploy it in the most intuitive way,” Kim said in a statement. “Neither a techno-determinist nor a techno-pessimist, I have always wanted to comment on the impact of technology in our society by using it.”
Ayoung Kim, Porosity Valley 2: Tricksters’ Plot, 2019 © Ayoung Kim. Photo: Swan Park
Kim has used technology in just about every cutting-edge form in her work. Her upcoming solo show at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof (28 February-20 July), for instance, incorporates artificial intelligence (AI), games, videos and sculptures that will enable visitors to explore her infinitely unfolding digital environments. Her practice incorporates motion-capture technology, animation software, live-action video, performance, live simulation and more.
Kim’s virtual realms incorporate elements of Webtoons, the episodic digital comics popularised in South Korea, as well as the country’s GL (Girls’ Love) queer subculture. Her Delivery Dancer project, for example, invites players to navigate an avatar of a delivery-gig worker through a seemingly infinite and futuristic digital replica of Seoul, while an accompanying live-action video follows a contemporary gig worker on a sci-fi delivery route, which is occasionally paused for dancing interludes.
Ayoung Kim, Delivery Dancer’s Arc: Inverse, 2024 (still) © Ayoung Kim
“At its core, Ayoung Kim’s path-breaking work invites viewers not only to marvel at her technical mastery but also to engage with deep questions about time and the human experience in an accelerating digital age,” Naomi Beckwith, the Guggenheim’s deputy director and chief curator, said in a statement. “By revealing the convergence of machines and humanity, her visionary work illuminates the most pressing challenges of our era.”
Born and based in Seoul, Kim received her BFA from Kookmin University, a BA in photography from London College of Communication and an MFA from the Chelsea College of Arts in London. Her work is currently featured in the major digital-art survey Machine Love: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art (until 8 June) at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.
Ayoung Kim, Delivery Dancer’s Arc: 0º Receiver, 2024 (still) © Ayoung Kim
In addition to her upcoming show at Hamburger Bahnhof, she will open projects later this year at M+ in Hong Kong and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. Kim will also have a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 (6 November-16 March 2026), the Museum of Modern Art’s contemporary-art kunsthalle in Queens, New York. She is represented by Gallery Hyundai, one of the most prominent Korean galleries.
Kim is the third artist to receive the LG Guggenheim Award, which was awarded to Stephanie Dinkins—the US artist known for her pioneering work with AI—in its inaugural edition in 2023, and to the Taiwan-born Net art trailblazer Shu Lea Cheang last year.
