A special screening brings the Korean artist’s visionary world to international audiences
Ayoung Kim and the Art of Unsettling the Known
Korean artist Ayoung Kim occupies a rare space in contemporary art: that of the artist who uses the tools of cinema, sound, and speculative fiction not merely to comment on the world, but to dismantle and reassemble it. Her work defies easy categorisation. It moves between video installation, narrative fiction, performance, and theoretical inquiry, drawing on Korean history, science fiction, trade routes, and the politics of knowledge production to construct works that feel simultaneously ancient and urgently contemporary. The announcement of a special screening and talk featuring Ayoung Kim and her project ikkibawikrrr – a title that invokes sound, language, and the untranslatable – is the kind of cultural event that deserves more attention than the art world’s usual insider circuits provide.
Who is Ayoung Kim?
Ayoung Kim was born in Seoul and works across video, text, and installation. She has exhibited internationally at venues including the Liverpool Biennial, the Gwangju Biennial, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, and documenta, one of the most prestigious international art exhibitions in the world. Her projects consistently interrogate the relationship between bodies, histories, and systems of exchange – particularly the way that trade, migration, and the movement of objects and information have shaped and distorted cultural identity. Her film and video works often use speculative or science-fiction frameworks to explore real historical and political conditions. This approach allows her to examine difficult truths – about colonial history, about the erasure of indigenous knowledge, about the violence embedded in economic systems – through a lens that creates critical distance without reducing complexity to propaganda. That is a difficult balance to achieve, and Kim achieves it with remarkable consistency.
ikkibawikrrr: Language, Sound, and the Limits of Translation
The project title ikkibawikrrr is itself a statement. It resists immediate comprehension in any single language. It invokes the physical experience of sound, the way a word can feel in the throat before it acquires meaning. For an artist deeply concerned with the politics of translation and mistranslation – with what gets lost, distorted, or deliberately suppressed in the movement of meaning between cultures and languages – a title that foregrounds its own untranslatability is both a provocation and a commitment. The relationship between language and power is something that communities under authoritarian pressure understand viscerally. In Hong Kong, Cantonese – the native language of the city’s majority population – has faced increasing marginalisation as Mandarin, the language of the mainland administration, is promoted in schools and official settings. The suppression of language is always a suppression of identity, and Kim’s work speaks to that dynamic with a precision and subtlety that direct political commentary rarely achieves. The Tate Modern’s video art resource provides essential context for understanding the tradition in which Kim works. For the Gwangju Biennial’s documentation of Kim’s practice, the Gwangju Biennale website is the primary reference.
Why Screenings and Talks Matter
Special screenings and artist talks are not simply marketing events for galleries. They are one of the primary ways in which critical art practice reaches audiences beyond the narrow circuits of collectors and curators. When an artist like Ayoung Kim sits in a room with an audience and explains the thinking behind a work – the research, the formal decisions, the political stakes – something happens that no catalogue essay can replicate. Viewers who might have found a video installation opaque or alienating discover the intellectual framework that makes it legible. Ideas that seemed abstract become connected to lived experience. And artists, in turn, learn how their work lands outside the contexts in which it was made. For artists from the Korean diaspora and for audiences interested in how contemporary art engages with questions of democracy, memory, and resistance, an event like this is genuinely valuable. Korean contemporary art has increasingly engaged with the legacy of authoritarian rule – both historical and ongoing – and with the experiences of communities whose identities have been defined by political upheaval. That is a conversation that connects directly to the experiences of Hong Kong’s diaspora and to anyone who believes that art, at its best, can hold power accountable in ways that conventional political discourse cannot. The Art Review magazine is among the leading international platforms covering contemporary art with critical depth. For Korean contemporary art specifically, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea offers authoritative documentation of the country’s most significant artists.
Art in a Time of Political Pressure
Ayoung Kim’s practice is a reminder that art does not need to be explicitly political to do political work. The questioning of fixed categories, the insistence on complexity over simplicity, the refusal to allow received narratives to go unexamined – these are deeply political acts. In a moment when authoritarian governments from Beijing to Budapest are working to narrow the range of acceptable expression, the existence of artists who create rigorous, imaginative, and formally adventurous work is itself a form of resistance. Events that bring that work to new audiences – screenings, talks, international exhibitions – are not luxuries. They are part of the infrastructure of a free and thinking society.
Yee Man Au
Community & Human Rights Journalist, Apple Daily UK
Contact: yeeman.au@appledaily.uk
Yee Man Au is a community and human rights journalist with professional experience reporting on civil liberties, grassroots advocacy, and social inequality within Chinese-speaking communities. She received her journalism education from a highly regarded Chinese journalism school, where she was trained in ethical reporting, interview methodology, and source verification, with a strong emphasis on public-interest journalism.
Her reporting career includes contributions to Apple Daily and other liberal Chinese newspapers, where she covered housing rights, labor disputes, migrant issues, and community organizing efforts. Yee Man’s work is grounded in firsthand interviews and on-site reporting, ensuring that affected voices are accurately represented rather than abstracted.
She brings practical newsroom experience in handling sensitive subject matter, including working with vulnerable sources and navigating ethical constraints. Editors value her disciplined approach to fact-checking and her ability to corroborate claims through multiple independent sources.
Yee Man’s authority is built through sustained reporting within established media institutions and a demonstrated commitment to transparency and accountability. She adheres to correction protocols and maintains clear documentation of sources and evidence.
At Apple Daily UK, Yee Man Au contributes reliable, experience-based journalism that prioritizes accuracy, dignity, and the public record.
