‘Trailblazing’ Digital Artist Ayoung Kim Wins 2025 LG Guggenheim Award

Ayoung Kim b. 1979, South Korea Follow +

Seoul-based artist Ayoung Kim has received a 100,000 USD prize for her work at the crossroads of art and new technologies like virtual reality and live simulation.

As the third recipient of the LG Guggenheim Award, Kim’s work was applauded by the jury for representing a ‘paradigm shift in how art can engage with emerging technologies’ and offering ‘transformative perspectives on how humanity interacts with and understands these new tools’.

The jury called the former motion designer a ‘pioneering, trailblazing artist of her time’ for her work combining new technologies with traditional mediums like performance and sculpture.

The artist told Ocula the award is an endorsement that will open new doors for her practice and ‘guide my future in ways I never imagined’.

Her recent work explores technology’s impact on people’s perception of reality and way of life, including ‘how our sense of time has become nanofied’.

‘To me, technology encompasses not only cutting-edge advancements of AI but a wide spectrum of pre-modern, often forgotten technologies, such as ancient methods of time measurement,’ she said.

Kim will open an exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin later this month, followed by a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York from November.

The LG Guggenheim Award was conceived as part of a five-year partnership between Guggenheim and LG and includes a future exhibition at the museum. —[O]

Main image: Ayoung Kim. Courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Photo: Kanghyuk Lee.