Kim Young-eun Wins the 2025 Korea Artist Prize by MMCA

Visual artist Kim Young-eun, an alumna of the School of Visual Arts, was named the recipient of the 2025 Korea Artist Prize, co-hosted by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and the SBS Foundation.

Established in 2012, the Korea Artist Prize is one of South Korea’s leading contemporary art sponsorship programs, jointly run by the MMCA and the SBS Foundation. The prize provides financial and institutional support to emerging and mid-career artists. Each year, four selected artists develop new works and present them through exhibitions and international projects.

Kim explores sound and hearing as deeply political and social constructs. Through multidisciplinary projects grounded in sound ethnography, she investigates how modes of listening are shaped and reinforced within historical and cultural contexts. By capturing layers of sound across temporal and spatial dimensions, Kim reveals often-unnoticed relations embedded in everyday landscapes.

Her latest works, Listening Guests (2025) and Go Back To Your (2025), trace the life journeys of individuals who form communities through migration and translation within diasporic contexts. The jury commended Kim’s skillful use of sound as a conceptual and political medium to explore themes of identity, migration, and marginalization.

The 2025 Korea Artist Prize selection process took place over three days: exhibition walkthroughs with the artists and jury on January 12, a public panel discussion on January 13, and a private review session on January 14.

This year’s jury included Emily Pethick (former Director, Rijksakademie of Fine Arts, Netherlands), Gridthiya Gaweewong (Curator and Artistic Director, Jim Thompson Art Center, Thailand), Jordan Carter (Co-Department Head and Curator, Dia Art Foundation, US), Ahn Soyeon (Artistic Director, Atelier Hermès), Kim Jang-eon (Independent Curator), and Kim Sung-hee (Director, MMCA).

In their final statement, the committee praised Kim for employing sound not merely as a sensory experience, but as a critical lens through which to examine social and political conditions.