AYOUNG KIM

Kim blends speculative fiction with historical narratives, archaeology, and new media to craft complex, multilayered stories that challenge conventional perceptions of reality. Themes of nationhood, global resources, gender roles, ancient myths, technoprecarity, and the mysteries of the built environment recur across an expansive practice that spans video, performance, sonic fiction, and installations.

Her practice is rooted in extensive research, drawing from modern and contemporary Korean history, geopolitics, and transnational movements. She employs speculative storytelling, world-building, and myth-making to construct narratives that both reflect and distort current realities, inviting audiences to consider more-than-human, non-anthropocentric modes of coexistence.

What is Ayoung Kim’s Background?

Born in 1979 in Seoul, South Korea, Ayoung Kim studied Visual Communication Design at Kookmin University, graduating in 2002. She continued her education in the United Kingdom, obtaining an ABC Diploma in Art and Design from the London College of Communication in 2005 and a Master of Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Arts in 2010.

What are Some Notable Artworks by Ayoung Kim?

Ayoung Kim’s works often fuse factual and fictional elements, creating narratives that traverse time, space, and multiple universes. Notable artworks include her 2012 work PH Express examined migration and cultural exchange through a multimedia installation, while Zepheth, Whale Oil from the Hanging Gardens to You, Shell (2015) linked ancient histories to contemporary resource politics and global trade.

In 2016, she presented In This Vessel We Shall Be Kept at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, an immersive installation that reimagined ancient myths within present-day geopolitical contexts. The Porosity Valley projects (from 2018) continued this exploration, probing porous borders, fluid identities, and extractive economies in a globalised world.

Her Delivery Dancer cycle has become a signature body of work, using live action, 3D animation, video game engines, and generative AI to follow queer female delivery drivers navigating a hyper-capitalist city and platform labour systems. Works such as Delivery Dancer’s Sphere (2022), Delivery Dancer Simulation (2022), and Evening Peak Time Is Back (2022) form the core of this trilogy, interrogating gig economies, optimisation, and parallel universes through a speculative visual language.

‘Delivery Dancer’s Sphere’ by Ayoung Kim

Delivery Dancer’s Sphere is a single-channel, 24-minute video work conceived by Ayoung Kim during the COVID-19 pandemic that blends 3D animation with live-action footage to create a hyperreal city navigated by motorbike-riding female delivery drivers. Centred on a character who moves through an endlessly optimised delivery system, the work reflects on platform labour, surveillance, and the accelerationist logic of contemporary urban life.

The film has screened internationally and received the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica, one of the longest-running and most prestigious awards for new media and digital art. It features prominently in Ayoung Kim: Delivery Dancer Codex at MoMA PS1, where the complete trilogy is installed as an immersive environment.

What awards and recognition has Ayoung Kim received?

Ayoung Kim has received significant recognition for her innovative approach to media art in Korea and internationally. In 2010 she received the British Institution Award from the Royal Academy of Arts in London, an early acknowledgement of her experimental moving-image practice.

She was a finalist for the Korea Artist Prize in 2019, organised by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul, underscoring her central role in contemporary Korean art. In 2024, Kim received the inaugural Future Prize from the Asia Culture Center (National Asian Culture Center) in Gwangju, recognising her forward-looking engagement with technology and narrative.

In 2025, Kim became the third recipient of the LG Guggenheim Award, which grants 100,000 USD to artists working at the intersection of art and technology; she noted in an interview that the award would open new doors for her work and ‘guide my future in ways I never imagined’. In January 2026, she was named one of ten laureates of the CHANEL Next Prize, receiving €100,000 in unrestricted funding and access to a two-year mentorship and networking programme supported by the CHANEL Culture Fund.

What are some important Ayoung Kim exhibitions?

Ayoung Kim’s work has been widely exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Asia, Europe, and North America. Earlier solo presentations include Porosity Valley at Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul (2018), and In This Vessel We Shall Be Kept at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016), which consolidated her reputation for ambitious, research-based installations.

Her work has appeared in major international exhibitions such as the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and the 2020 Busan Biennale, situating her practice within critical global discourses on technology, ecology, and politics. From June 2024 to January 2025, Delivery Dancer’s Sphere was presented at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, further extending the reach of the Delivery Dancer cycle.

In 2025 and 2026, Kim’s exhibitions expanded significantly:

• Many Worlds Over, a major museum solo exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin (28 February–20 July 2025), surveyed key works and recent projects.
• Ayoung Kim: Delivery Dancer Codex at MoMA PS1, New York (6 November 2025–16 March 2026), marked her first solo exhibition in the United States, presenting the full Delivery Dancer trilogy and related works across the museum’s third-floor galleries.

Her works have also featured in high-profile group and thematic shows such as MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (13 February–8 June 2025), which highlighted artists engaging with video games and artificial intelligence. Additional presentations at institutions including M+ in Hong Kong, ACMI in Melbourne, and FACT Liverpool reflect the growing global interest in her technologically informed, speculative narratives.

Ayoung Kim FAQs

Ocula | 2026