Ayoung Kim will hold her first solo exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, one of Germany's most prominent contemporary art museums.

This exhibition, spanning her artistic activities over the past five years, explores themes such as migration, xenophobia, queerness, and geopolitics. It delves deeply into the symbiotic relationship between data, humanity, and the Earth.

Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, located in Berlin, Germany, is a leading museum showcasing art from the late 19th century to the present. Housed in a repurposed former train station, it boasts a distinctive spatial design. The museum is renowned not only for exhibiting works by world-famous masters but also for presenting exhibitions by artists offering innovative perspectives.

Ayoung Kim’s exhibition marks the second solo exhibition by a Korean artist at this institution, following Lee Ufan’s show last year. This event holds significant importance as it represents the advancement of contemporary Korean art onto a major international stage in Germany, a central hub of global art.

Ayoung Kim’s work traverses different realities of possibility through humans, characters, mythical beings, and virtual entities. It explores the clash of possible and impossible worlds, transcending the boundaries of time and space.

Utilizing AI, VR, video, game simulations, sculpture, and sonic fiction, Kim creates vast virtual worlds governed by their unique temporal and spatial laws.

These worlds often connect to hypothetical narratives rooted in reality, where the audience moves beyond passive viewing to take on an active role as first-person players, shaping the narrative from their perspectives.

Notable works include Delivery Dancer’s Arc: Inverse, Arks of the Five, and Temple of the Salt. These works address themes such as diaspora, environmental issues, and the nature of capitalism, exploring the interplay between humanity, technology, nature, and artificiality. For instance, Arks of the Five delves into global crises and survival through storytelling and simulation in a virtual world, while Delivery Dancer reinterprets the realities of the digital economy and platform labor through mythical imagination.

Born in Seoul in 1979, Ayoung Kim studied Visual Design in Korea and Photography and Fine Art in the UK. She currently works actively across Korea and abroad.

Her works have been showcased at the 12th Asia Pacific Triennial (APT), Liverpool Biennial, Venice Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, and Tate Modern’s "Film Club" program, among others. Recently, she has garnered attention in Europe and North America, playing a pivotal role in introducing the experimental and innovative nature of contemporary Korean art to the global stage.

References

• 함부르거 반호프 (Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart)