The Ilwoo Foundation, a public interest foundation under the Hanjin Group, announced on April 11 that media artist An Jungju has been selected as the recipient of the ‘2025 ILWOO Art Award’.

An Jungju is a media artist who explores the rhythms of perception, social structures, and the mechanisms of human cognition through experimental practices involving video, sound, and photography. His works are composed of fragmented, repeated, distorted, and layered images and sounds gathered from everyday life and mass media.

By reassembling the familiar into unfamiliar configurations, he offers audiences a renewed awareness of sensory layers that are often overlooked. His meticulous editing of audiovisual material and structurally refined compositions are imbued with a critical gaze—this is the hallmark of his practice.

One of his signature works, 〈Their War 2 – Israel〉 (2005), is a single-channel video piece that documents the separation wall between Israel and Palestine. By removing the original sound and layering newly composed music, the piece invites viewers to experience the concept of ‘border’ through a sensory reconstruction. The work critically reflects on political realities through audiovisual abstraction and is now part of the permanent collection of the Stedelijk Museum in the Netherlands.

His 2015 work, 〈Letter of Luck〉, is a six-channel video installation composed of video clips filmed during his travels around the world, combined with 77 word cards. The piece explores how sound, language, and image can construct a new, nonlinear narrative structure, encouraging the viewer to reimagine the fluid boundaries of meaning and interpretation. Through sonic flow, visual rhythm, and semantic disjunction, the work creates an immersive experience of temporal dislocation within physical space.

In 2021, he held a solo exhibition titled 《kick, clap, hat》 at Platform-L Contemporary Art Center in Seoul. The exhibition presented sound-image compositions built through repetition, glitch, and transformation, offering a layered narrative of sensory rhythms. Rather than conveying a linear storyline, the works intentionally deconstructed narrative conventions, prompting audiences to actively construct their own interpretations. This exhibition marked an expanded experiment in audiovisual language that disrupted the frames of the everyday.

In 2024, An participated in the group exhibition 《Everything That Weaves the Universe – On Their Quantum Relations》, organized by Imazu Project. In this exhibition, he presented a philosophically driven video installation that examined the structural interconnectedness of the universe and humanity. Through the notion of "quantum relationships," the work visualized unseen interactions, resonances, and affective entanglements, embodying his interdisciplinary approach across science, art, and the humanities.

With the ILWOO Art Award, An Jungju receives ₩30 million (approx. USD 22,556) in production support and ₩30 million (approx. USD 22,556) in Korean Air flight vouchers, allowing him to further develop his practice on the international stage. In 2027, he will hold a solo exhibition at Ilwoo Space, located in the lobby of the Korean Air Seosomun Building in central Seoul. The exhibition is expected to serve as both a continuation and an evolution of his practice, marking a significant new chapter in his artistic journey.

An Jungju first rose to prominence after receiving the 2014 Doosan Yonkang Artist Award, followed by participation in the 2016 Doosan Residency in New York. In 2018, he was awarded the Songeun Art Award (Excellence Prize), further solidifying his position within the Korean contemporary art scene. His works are included in the collections of major institutions such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Korea), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the British Museum, the Museo di Capodimonte in Italy, and the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan.