Ayoung Kim (b. 1979) has presented works in video, installation, and performance, reconstructing historical facts and contemporary issues such as Korea's modern and contemporary history, geopolitics, emigration, and transnational movement into multilayered narratives through meticulous research. 

In particular, she focuses on beings and events that deviate from and escape the framework of such histories and realities. Her interest lies in the ambiguous, liminal states of these entities, unraveling stories about the "truth" behind what we believe to be "facts" through nonlinear and fluid speculative narratives.

Ayoung Kim's early series Ephemeral Ephemera (2007–2009) reimagined tragic events reported in newspapers through photo collages. This work stemmed from the artist's skepticism toward media and her reflections on human absurdity. News, regardless of how brutal or heavy its content may be, transforms various aspects of finite human life into consumable symbols of flat images and text. 

Human lives ultimately become mere consumable stories on the pages of newspapers, relegated to the past with the passage of time and soon forgotten. To reimagine the surreal, unbelievable events of reality—or the things that are fading away—in a way different from their real-world manifestations, Kim gathered forms that existed in reality.

The artist imagined scenes of events based on the information provided by the media and photographed tangible forms and surfaces encountered in reality. These images were then adjusted to fit the context, cut out, and assembled to create each scene. The fragile paper stage props and their resulting two-dimensional photographs become ‘ephemera’—both as fleeting, finite lives and as collectible items after their use has passed—while simultaneously serving as a puzzle composed of fragments of reality.

Ayoung Kim’s PH Express (2011–2012) is a project inspired by the late 19th-century British occupation of Geomundo Island (Port Hamilton). It consists of video works based on scripts written through extensive archival research and re-materialized texts in the form of newspapers. 

PH Express began with the artist’s question: Can texts that were recorded but remain unspoken or overlooked be considered history? Through confidential diplomatic documents, prominent daily newspapers, tabloids, illustrations, and various little-known archival materials, Kim reexamined how the geopolitics, diplomacy, and class systems of Europe and Asia at the time resonate with the present.

Through extensive research, the artist discovered a gap between mass media and diplomatic documents, as well as a peculiar binary relationship between materials studied in Korea and those published in Britain. 

The collected data revealed that the occupation of Geomundo was not merely a localized incident but an international issue unfolding within the dynamics of European powers at the time. It also illustrated how Port Hamilton, in the context of Korea's isolationist policies and internal strife, became a contentious topic, largely excluding the nation itself from the discourse. 

The dialogue and narration in the video work PH Express: Two-Channel Video are primarily composed of text collages extracted, quoted, and rearranged from these historical materials. The video employs the grammar of black comedy to present various perspectives and attitudes of British diplomats, aristocrats, captains, and sailors toward Geomundo.

Ayoung Kim’s practice of reconstructing narratives based on real events takes the form of a narrative sound/music drama in Zepheth, Whale Oil from the Hanging Gardens to You, Shell (2014–2015). This project, consisting of three versions, explores events surrounding bitumen and petroleum resources, which gained renewed significance as energy sources in modernity. 

The series delves into the history of bitumen, the origins of oil capitalism, the entry of Korean construction companies into the Middle East during the 1970s and 1980s, the global energy crisis triggered by the oil shock, and the modernization processes of oil-producing nations like Kuwait—where the artist’s father, a construction worker, once stayed—and Korea. By interweaving these narratives, the project highlights the diverse spatiotemporal influences of oil as a modern invention.

Based on this series of historical events, Ayoung Kim constructed a narrative and used algorithmic technology to transform it, generating additional stories. To further enrich the work, a composition algorithm was used to create music for the story written by the artist, while a composer created music for the algorithmically generated narrative. 

The voices of voice performers, who contributed to the musical composition, were layered with those of narrators and actors driving the narrative, creating a polyphonic and hybrid tapestry of voices. Stories surrounding oil, a modern invention, are recalled in her work through the shapeless voices of people in various space and time.

The third version of the project, Zepheth, Whale Oil from the Hanging Gardens to You, Shell 3 (2015), consists of a six-channel sound installation, a wall diagram, and a 20-minute voice performance by seven performers. The narratives generated by the algorithmic device follow arbitrary rules, resulting in the loss of meaning and context. 

In this project, the intervention of the algorithmic device often disrupts the flow of a coherent narrative. However, this disruption introduces fractures in the overall structure, creating openings that enable infinite expansions of the story.

In her speculative fiction (SF) work Porosity Valley, Portable Holes (2017), presented at the 2018 Gwangju Biennale, Ayoung Kim parallels and interchanges the concepts of physical migration and data migration, drawing on an interest in subterranean geology. The artist focuses on the porosity of the "ground," which mediates not only physical migrations on the surface but also the migration of data and information through buried fiber-optic cables within geological strata. 

By employing the concept of "porosity" as a narrative device, the work interweaves three forms of porosity. The first is geological porosity, referring to the gradual hollowing of subsurface layers due to mineral extraction. The second is the porosity of data, associated with data loss. The third is narrative porosity, represented by plot holes within the narrative structure.

The video unfolds within the fictional space of “Porosity Valley”, where a mineral entity named Petra Genetrix migrates to another rock platform following the explosion of Porosity Valley. Petra is sent to a replicated Porosity Valley prepared by a migration data center, where they unexpectedly encounter an identical version of themselves. The two engage in a scuffle before ultimately merging, bringing the narrative to a close. 

This story traverses and navigates through the porosity spaces within subterranean geological structures. By considering the geological domain as a foundation for both physical migration of beings and data migration, the work proposes transformations that traverse multiple strata of time and space. Visual elements such as CG animations, 3D renderings, and chroma key composited footage collide and intersect, coexisting with layered synthetic soundscapes and vocal performances.

The speculative fiction and narrative possibilities that the artist first explored in this project begin with imagining an impossible reality. This approach links to reality in ways that seem impossible, while simultaneously allowing for temporary detachment, enabling one to view potential realms beyond the perceived reality.

In 2019, Ayoung Kim participated in the Korea Artist Prize exhibition, where she presented the second series of her speculative fiction project, Porosity Valley 2: Tricksters’ Plots. In this work, the artist overlaps two aspects of migration in the 21st century: the migration of refugees and the migration of data. Once again, she delves into the meaning of migration.

The video reflects on the concept of land and borders, showing Petra, the protagonist, experiencing life as a refugee and the biopolitical controls they face. It explores the movement of migrants, refugees, rivers, and data, while reflecting on the interwoven nature of these elements within the framework of solid land and borders.

Kim weaves speculative narratives in projects like this, focusing on the involuntary migration occurring across borders, from ecological, political, and economic perspectives, as well as contemporary refugee issues. In Delivery Dancer’s Sphere (2022), she explores the forced mobility of contemporary subjects, symbolized by delivery riders, who are collected through digital footprints and dominated by app algorithms, examining the bodily sensations linked to apps.

The video work Delivery Dancer’s Sphere unfolds in a fictional city, Seoul, caught between techno-orientalism and Asian futurism. It follows a female delivery rider, trapped in the ever-updating maze of a delivery app’s navigation, racing through it.

The delivery platform, Delivery Dancer, is controlled by the master algorithm, Dance Master, who manages the dancers (delivery riders) through the app, constantly sending out deliveries. During the transmission process, a topological distortion and an unknown error occur, leading the protagonist to encounter her doppelgänger.

This project is not only about the gig economy and platform labor, but also about the topological labyrinth experienced through the mobile screen in the form of an app, the dual existence of inhabiting both the world and reality simultaneously, possible world theory, the extreme state of awareness of delivery riders, and the accelerationist urge for the constant optimization of body and time.

Ayoung Kim, selected as the first recipient of the ACC Future Prize this year, is currently presenting her new work Delivery Dancer’s Arc: Inverse (2024) as part of her solo exhibition at the National Asian Culture Center. In this new piece, the artist explores the traditional cosmology and time systems of non-Western cultures, which are fading since the Western modernization, and collaborates with artificial intelligence to depict a vision of the future where virtual worlds are elevated.

The protagonists from the previous work appear in this piece as inhabitants of a distant, isolated virtual city. They are tasked with delivering artifacts containing the time concepts of a bygone era, and in the process, they cause a collision between different time perceptions and possible worlds.

Along with this narrative, the video presents a new understanding of time and space through a world where extinct cosmologies and alternative time systems coexist, offering an experience that transcends the boundaries between tradition and modernity, reality and the virtual.

In the midst of a global crisis that has overturned our faith in facts and made the future unpredictable, Ayoung Kim's work stimulates our speculative imagination and provides an opportunity to face the missing and forgotten 'truth' of this world.

“What we call a ‘story’ is something that by its nature always changes and transforms through its utterance, so that every kind of ‘story’ has a fundamentally synthetic quality.” (Ayoung Kim, Artist Note)

Ayoung Kim has presented her works at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and M+ in Hong Kong in 2024, Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, HEK (House of Electronic Arts) in Basel, IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam, CPH: DOX Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival in 2023. Her work has also been featured at the Taipei Kuandu Biennial in 2022, Taichung Asian Art Biennial in 2021, Berlin International Film Festival and Busan Biennale in 2020, Gwangju Biennale and Ilmin Museum of Art in 2018, Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2016, and the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, among others.

Her Delivery Dancer’s Sphere is a recipient of the Golden Nica Award in the New Animation Art category at Austria’s ‘Prix Ars Electronica’ and the Terayama Shuji Prize at the 37th Image Forum Festival in Japan in 2023. In 2019, she was a finalist for the ‘Korea Artist Prize’ at MMCA, and in 2015, she received the ‘Young Artist of the Year Award’ from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Korea.

Her works are included in the collections at Tate Modern in the UK, Frac Lorraine in Metz, Sharjah Art Foundation in Sharjah, Kadist Foundation in San Francisco, MMCA in Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, Busan Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, and Joaquim Paiva Collection at Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, among others.

References

• 김아영, Ayoung Kim (Artist Website)
• 갤러리현대, 김아영 (Gallery Hyundai, Ayoung Kim)
• 국립아시아문화전당, ACC 미래상 2024: 김아영 (Asian Culture Center, ACC Future Prize 2024: Ayoung Kim)
• 국립현대미술관, 김아영 b | 제페트, 그 공중정원의 고래기름을 드립니다. 쉘3 | 2015 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), Ayoung Kim b | Zepheth, Whale Oil from the Hanging Gardens to You, Shell 3 | 2015)
• 국립현대미술관, 김아영 b | 다공성 계곡, 이동식 구멍들 | 2017 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), Ayoung Kim b | Porosity Valley, Portable Holes | 2017)
• 갤러리현대, 김아영 : 문법과 마법 (Gallery Hyundai, Ayoung Kim: Syntax and Sorcery)