The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and LG have announced Ayoung Kim as the recipient of this year's LG Guggenheim Award. Established as part of their Art and Technology Initiative, the Award carries a $100,000 unrestricted honorarium designed to support artists whose creative vision uncovers new ground at the intersection of art and technology. In response to the award, Kim stated that she views technology neither as a techno-pessimist nor as a techno-determinist, rather desiring to provide a commentary through her work on the positive and negative aspects that technology has had on society and intersocial relations.

Kim is a digital artist who implements cinematic techniques and video game engines to construct sensory immersive digital environments. Her training in motion graphics and lens-based media serves as the technical laboratory where she concocts her phantasmagoric virtual spaces. In Kim's work, webtoon aesthetics and the Korean queer subculture of Girls’ Love (GL) collide and intermesh in speculative worlds where ancient cosmologies subsist together with AI-managed service workers and refugees in cyber realities.

Ayoung Kim, Evening Peak Time Is Back (feat. 1172 Character Illustration) (detail), 2022. Wallpaper installation, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Hyundai.

Kim weaves the aforementioned elements into complex narratives, seeking to penetrate into the heart of the “truth” that substantiates our notion of “fact” amidst unfolding global crises. She recently opened a show at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, where her Delivery Dancer series follows the story of a female delivery driver and her doppelgänger in a fictionalized futuristic rendition of Seoul. Kim also has exhibitions slated to open at M+ in Hong Kong, Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and MoMA PS1.

Kim is the third artist to receive the LG Guggenheim Award. Previous winners include Stephanie Dinkins, known for her pioneering work in AI, and Shu Lea Cheang, whose recognition of the liberatory potential of the digital sphere and exploration of emergent technologies has placed her at the forefront of this field. Kim will receive the award at a ceremony held on May 8, 2025 at the 2025 Young Collectors Council (YCC) Party, sponsored by LG Display. More information about this event can be found on the Guggenheim site.

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