“An in-depth reflection on speed, time, and capitalism — don’t miss it.”
“Three huge screens and a stunning display — the best exhibition in Gwangju!”
South Korean media artist Kim A-young’s new exhibition at the National Asian Culture Center (ACC) in Gwangju was the highlight of the festival. During the first week of September, international art figures praised it as a “must-see.” Hans Ulrich Obrist, the world’s most influential art curator and artistic director of London’s Serpentine Galleries, visited three times with different guests. Mami Kataoka, director of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, Klaus Biesenbach, director of Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, and British art critic Louisa Buck also shared rave reviews on social media.
Kim A-young is currently one of the most acclaimed artists in global media art. Last year, the 45-year-old became the first Korean to win the Golden Nica, the top award at Prix Ars Electronica, the world’s largest media art competition. Her award-winning piece, “Delivery Dancer’s Sphere” (2022), is now part of the Tate Modern collection and was recently screened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
This exhibition follows Kim’s receipt of the inaugural ACC Future Prize. With the support of the ACC and a 300 million won prize, she produced her new work, “Delivery Dancer’s Arc: Inverse.” The massive scale of the exhibition space is striking. It occupies the 1,560㎡ (472-pyeong) complex exhibition hall Space 1. Three large 11-meter-wide screens hang in a triangular formation, each showing slightly different videos. Visitors can sit or lie on the sloped floor, watching the 27-minute piece on loop.
The protagonists are two female delivery workers, racing through a virtual city. The piece is a sequel to “Delivery Dancer’s Sphere,” which won her the prestigious Golden Nica award. In the previous work, the characters were caught in a race through Seoul, eventually lost in the maze of their navigation systems. This time, they are in a new virtual city, Novaria, where they accidentally deliver an artifact containing an ancient worldview long thought extinct, sparking a clash between different concepts of time and reality.
In an interview at her Seoul studio after the Gwangju exhibition, Kim explained, “During the pandemic, stuck at home ordering delivery food, I became interested in delivery riders.” To better understand their world, she rode on the back of a bike through Itaewon, the Han River parks, and hillside neighborhoods. “Delivery apps push riders to be faster to increase profits. They seemed trapped in a circular maze, endlessly racing to prove their productivity,” she said. She represented this circularity as a sphere, and to explore the warped nature of time and space, she consulted mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers.
Time is the central theme of her latest work. Visitors first encounter a massive sundial installed on the floor. Kim focused on traditional concepts of time lost during Western modernization. She studied cosmologies and calendars from various cultures that disappeared when the Gregorian calendar became the global standard, seeking to revive them through contemporary art. “In an age where GPS and digital clocks define time, I wanted to reconnect with the universe’s rhythms, once understood by observing the movements of the sun and moon,” she explained.
Though the explanation sounds complex, the video is visually engaging and easy to follow. The expansive animated imagery and compelling narration draw viewers into a futuristic world. Arja Miller, director of Helsinki’s Art Museum (HAM), praised the exhibition, saying, “It’s a brilliant blend of mathematics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy, infused with fantasy. The reinterpretation of time creates an emotionally profound narrative.”
