Seoul-based artist Ayoung Kim has been selected as the third winner of the LG Guggenheim Award, a prize that comes with $100,000 and is part of a five-year, art-and-technology-focused collaboration between the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Korean electronics company LG.
Kim is known for films that have involved generative AI, video game engines, motion capture and animation software, and live-action footage. In her work, she combines mythologies and cosmologies, and draws on Webtoon aesthetics. Her works ponder the rapid acceleration of technology today and its role in society.
Among her most well-known pieces is the Delivery Dancer trilogy, which follows the stories of female delivery riders and the ways their work and life has changed since the pandemic.
“As technology advances, human life inevitably becomes more intricate. 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. “Not as a techno-determinist nor a techno-pessimist, I have always wanted to comment on the impact of technology in our society by using it.”
Kim has participated in some of the world’s top exhibitions, including the 2023 Sharjah Biennale, the 2018 Gwangju Biennale, and the 2015 Venice Biennale. She’s also had solo shows at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. She is currently featured in the “MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art” exhibition at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. Later this year, she will feature in Tate Modern’s “A Year in Art: 2050” group exhibition and have a solo show at MoMA PS1 in New York, which will serve as the US debut of the Delivery Dancer trilogy.
Kim was selected by a five-person jury that included artist Alfredo Jaar, Kunsthalle Basel director and chief curator Mohamed Almusibli, M+ artistic director and chief curator Doryun Chong, Guggenheim associate curator Noam Segal, and Sabine Himmelsbach, director of the HEK (House of Electronic Arts) Basel.
In a statement, the jury said, “The work of Ayoung Kim represents a paradigm shift in how art can engage with emerging technologies, fusing traditional cinematic and graphic tropes with new image making techniques. Her work offers transformative perspectives on how humanity interacts with and understands these new tools. The artist’s seamless blend of traditional and cutting-edge methods—melding performance, virtual environments, gaming engines and printmaking—demonstrates her ability to bridge seemingly disparate worlds into cohesive, thought-provoking pieces.”
