What Does 'Other' Include at This Time and Age: Young Korean Artists 2025: Here and Now

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA; Director Kim Sunghee) presents Young Korean Artists 2025: Here and Now from Thursday, 24 April to Sunday, 12 October, 2025, at MMCA Gwacheon.

First launched in 1981, Young Korean Artists is Korea’s longest-running program dedicated to identifying and supporting emerging artists while distinguishing their experimental tendencies and creative potential. Marking its 22nd edition, this year’s exhibition introduces narratives that begin with the individual (“I”) and extend toward the collective (“us”), expressed across a wide spectrum of media including painting, sculpture, video, sound, game, and performance.

The exhibition highlights 20 rising artists selected through a curatorial process involving both MMCA curators and external advisors: Kang Nayoung, Gwon Donghyun×Kwon Seajung, Kim Uljiro, Kim Jinhee, dianalab (baekgu(109) and Yousun), Mooni Perry, SANGHEE, Song Yehwan, Yagwang (Kim Terri and Jeon In), eobchae (Kim Nahee, Oh Cheonseok, and Hwang Hwi), Lee Eunhee, Chang Hanna, Jeong Juwon, Cho Hanna, and Jo Hanna. Actively engaged in contemporary culture and art, these artists pursue formative experimentation, collaboration, and collective practice across various media.

Subtitled Here and Now, the exhibition examines artistic practices that explore the issues and sensibilities of our times on both personal and generational levels. Through a critical reflection on the digital age, the participating artists propose alternative ways of relating to nonhuman agents and embracing multifaceted identities of the “other.” The works on view have been summoned into the context of contemporary life to invite viewers to reflect on the meaning and practice of care and hospitality in today’s society.

The exhibition is divided into five sections according to media and theme and distributed across the Central hall and Galleries 1 and 2 of MMCA Gwacheon. In keeping with the museum’s sustainability policy the use of temporary walls has been minimized, and furnishings from previous exhibitions have been repurposed to reduce this exhibition’s carbon footprint.

Gallery 1 accommodates two sections: “Beyond Technology” and “Building Relationships.” In “Beyond Technology,” artists Kim Uljiro, Song Yehwan, SANGHEE, and Lee Eunhee present images of new digital species and explore how we could communicate and form relationships in technologically augmented environments. These works simultaneously interrogate the ethical and social dilemmas engendered by digital advancement and propose new discourses and narratives that move beyond technocentrism. In “Building Relationships,” Gwon Donghyun×Kwon Seajung, painter Jo Hanna and Chang Hanna peer beneath the surface of the human body and collect “fossils” of artificial objects born of human desire and capital. These works question racialized and anthropocentric perspectives, envisioning the uncertain future as a world founded on the value of coexistence and proposing alternative ways of relating between humans and various nonhuman agents.

Gallery 2 holds “To the Other as an Other” and “Being Together.” In “To the Other as an Other,” Mooni Perry, Kim Jinhee, and video artist Cho Hanna capture intimate emotions rooted in everyday experiences of difference and exclusion. This section also explores the layered stories of individuals unable to return to their homelands through landscapes shaped by the clashing forces of capital and ecology that shed light on how individual lives interlock with history. The works prompt viewers to approach otherness with the recognition that regional, racial, and ethnic identities as well as gender and class are constantly reshaped and redefined within social, cultural, and historical contexts. “Being Together” features works by Kang Nayoung, Yagwang (Kim Terri and Jeon In), Jeong Juwon, and dianalab (baekgu(109) and Yousun), eobchae (Kim Nahee, Oh Cheonseok, and Hwang Hwi)  who challenge the stereotypical notions and representations of marginalized individuals and minorities and aesthetically reimagine the ethics of care and hospitality. Paying heed to the voices of diverse minorities, these artists seek alternative ways of including subjects excluded from conventional systems and dominant discourses, and moreover, they propose artistic practices for underrecognized and unvoiced others to become both spectators and expressive agents in their own right. This approach is further extended through collaborations with fellow creative practitioners across contemporary cultural and artistic fields, as well as through the formation of fluid collectives, where artists engage in a collaborative creative process and materialize the results through interaction with viewers and the sharing of sensory experiences.

The Central Hall features a work by eobchae (Kim Nahee, Oh Cheonseok, and Hwang Hwi) and a section titled “Young or Seeking”, including an archive dedicated to the participating artists. 

A robust lineup of associated programs is offered monthly during the exhibition period, including curator talks, artist talks, performances, and roundtable discussions. More information can be found on the MMCA website (mmca.go.kr).

Kim Sunghee, director of the MMCA, notes, “Young Korean Artists is not only a platform for discovering new talent but also a showcase of contemporary aesthetic perspectives and formative experiments. The MMCA will continue this legacy and remain committed to supporting emerging artists in the visual arts.”