Korean artist Shin Min (b. 1985) has been awarded the first-ever MGM Discoveries Art Prize at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025, earning international attention for her poignant and politically charged work.

Represented by P21 Gallery in the fair’s Discoveries section, Shin was selected as the sole winner among three shortlisted artists, receiving a $50,000  prize and an upcoming solo exhibition opportunity in Macau.

The jury praised Shin’s work as “a portrait of women enduring within a rigid social structure—an homage to their perseverance.” Art Basel also listed her work among the “8 Must-See Works” at the 2025 edition.


 
Paper, Anger, and Solidarity: Sculpting Resistance

Drawing on her own experiences working in fast-food chains and cafés to support herself, Shin Min explores how female service workers, often required to wear hairnets, are monitored, objectified, and systemically marginalized under capitalist structures.

Her materials—paper, clay, pencil, and crayon—may seem soft and ephemeral, but they bear the weight of rage, exhaustion, and resilience. Shin’s sculptures are not mere forms; they are living narratives.

Art Rooted in Experience: Faces of Invisible Labor

Her ongoing series ‘Usual Suspect’ takes its name from the way service workers are scrutinized through CCTV footage to identify who “dropped a hair” when customer complaints arise.

One notable work from this series, titled Yuck! There’s Hair in My Food, transforms that absurd yet disturbingly real scenario into a striking installation.

Each sculpture is crafted by layering more than ten sheets of oiled paper over a clay form, then drawn and colored with crayon. Their exaggerated features—furrowed brows, bulging eyes, open mouths—defy the forced smiles and submissiveness expected in the service industry. Shin’s figures embody unapologetic anger.

Capitalism Felt Through the Body, Imprinted on Paper

While working at McDonald’s, Shin was struck by the sheer volume of discarded French fry sacks, which she came to see as metaphors for disposable labor. Her 2014 sculpture Part-Time Worker in Downward Dog Pose uses actual McDonald’s fry bags wrapped over figures wearing hand-drawn uniforms. “I used the residue of poverty to depict poverty,” she explains.

Her use of the black satin-ribbon hairnet, a ubiquitous symbol of Korean service workers, recurs throughout her practice. In works like ‘Our Prayer’, the hairnet-wearing figures no longer appear submissive. Their piercing eyes and tense faces transform them into avatars of collective resistance.

Sculptures as Talismans: Paper Rituals and Prayers

Shin embeds handwritten prayers into her sculptures—messages wishing protection for viewers or loved ones. Her creative process resembles a spiritual ritual: paper is layered, text is repeated, and the resulting face reflects accumulated emotion.
 
“I don’t just make sculptures—I make paper talismans,” she says.

At Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), her installation The Future Reflected in My Heart allowed viewers to write their own wishes and attach them directly to the large bust, encouraging physical and emotional participation. For Shin, sculptures should not be fossilized objects but living altars for collective hope and catharsis.


 
Hey CCTV, Watch Us Dance—Reclaiming Surveillance Through Play

In her 2024 exhibition 《The Art of the Attention-Seeker》 at the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Shin presented Hey CCTV, Watch Us Dance, a bold reimagining of surveillance culture.

Instead of being passively observed, her figures face the cameras and perform, turning surveillance into self-expression. For Shin, being a “performative attention-seeker” is a strategic act of resistance—a way to amplify marginalized voices and provoke public dialogue.

Her work Let’s Take a Selfie Together❤️ imagines teenagers posing for a group photo that could be seen as cringe-worthy, defiant, or revolutionary—all at once. She frames SNS activity as contemporary solidarity, where likes and tags become gestures of mutual support.

Cute, Fierce, and Alive: Shin Min’s Sculptural Language

Shin openly describes herself as “a social media addict with a bloated ego.” Her aesthetic may appear playful or even cartoonish—“like something made in a high school art class,” she says—but it is underpinned by sharp political critique and emotional intensity. Her use of paper is intentional: fragile and ever-changing, it mirrors the precarity of life under capitalism.

Her recent projects, such as «Make a Wish» (SeMA, 2024), invite tactile interaction—encouraging visitors to touch, write on, and complete the artwork themselves. “Even if it gets damaged,” she says, “I want the work to live and breathe with people.”

 

Paper Figures as Social Mirrors

Shin is currently expanding her scope to explore the biological roots of war and gender, questioning the structural foundations of violence and the place of the female body in that history. Her work increasingly adopts a macro perspective, but her core remains the same: lived reality, feminist rage, and a yearning for transformation.
 
Her sculptures are not just objects; they are portraits of the unheard, reflections of society’s blind spots, and amplifiers of suppressed voices.

Shin Min (@fatshinmin) has participated in numerous major exhibitions, including 《The Art of the Attention-Seeker》 (Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, 2024), 《Make a Wish》 (SeMA, 2024), 《Paper Mirror》 (2023), 《Se-Mi》 (2022), 《Sculptural Impulse》 (SeMA, 2022), 《Voice》 (Jeon Tae-il Memorial Hall, 2021), 《Shackles and Nose Rings》 (OCI Museum, 2019), and 《Genre Allegory – Sculptural》 (Total Museum of Contemporary Art, 2018).