Media artist Choi Chan-sook named winner of Korea Artist Prize 2021

Artist Choi Chan-sook / Courtesy of MMCA

By Park Han-sol

Media artist Choi Chan-sook has been named the winner of the Korea Artist Prize 2021, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) announced, Monday.

As an artist based in Berlin and Seoul, Choi has long utilized her personal history of migration as a lens to view the concepts of land, community and settlement and how they constitute one's memories and history.

In 2019, while staying in the small village of Yangji-ri in Gangwon Province ― originally established for "propagandistic purposes" in the border region of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) ― she focused on the story of village women who cannot claim ownership of its land, marked by the complex history of seizure and reclamation from the 1950-53 Korean War and the present-day problem of real estate speculation.

It was during her interaction with such individuals who had been marginalized and pushed off of their land that she became gripped by the question of when and what prompted humans to transform the vast strip of natural terrain into commodified real estate.

Installation view of Choi Chan-sook's "qbit to adam" (2021) at the MMCA exhibition, "Korea Artist Prize 2021" / Courtesy of MMCA

The 45-year-old's eyes turned eventually to the Atacama Desert in Chile as one of the prime representations of the changing relationship between humans and land. The primitive desert plateau has, over the years, been turned into the site of both the world's biggest copper mine, Minera Escondida, and the largest astronomy project, the ALMA telescope, to satisfy humanity's relentless economic and intellectual desires.

She won the Korea Artist Prize 2021 with her latest installation, "qbit to adam," which embodies such themes surrounding human labor and ownership of land ― a practice which, she says, is continued figuratively even in cryptocurrency mining and metaverse real estate.

Eugene Tan, one of the prize jury members and the director of the National Art Gallery Singapore, commented that Choi's piece has "gracefully portrayed the timely theme of land ownership, which has been a topic of interest among the Asian and the larger international community."

MMCA Director Youn Bum-mo noted, "From the copper mine in Chile to crypto mining, the artist has presented an extensive story that pertains to contemporary reality in a visually striking way."

Since 2012, the Korea Artist Prize, co-organized by the MMCA and SBS Foundation, has been drawing up a shortlist of four individuals or teams every year who present new visions for the country's contemporary art, and announcing the winner based on an extensive jury review. The finalists for the latest edition were Choi, Bang Jeong-a, Kim Sang-jin and Oh Min.

The exhibition featuring the four finalists runs through March 20 at the MMCA's Seoul branch next to Gyeongbok Palace.

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