Jury’s Statement

The recipient of the DOOSAN Yonkang Arts Award is determined through a process wherein three nominators/jury each recommend three artists, and those nominators also judge the candidates for the final selection. The dual role of nominators as jury allows for a rediscovery of artists who may not have initially been considered for recommendation, which in turn inspires the jury to consider arguments in favor of artists who they did not recommend. This process facilitates a comprehensive approach to evaluating all nominated artists equally as one big pool of candidates. The fact that recommendations do not automatically translate into advocacy for the award enables a rich discussion from the stage of criteria-setting of the judging process.

For the 2024 award, the slate of recommended artists comprised eight individuals, predominantly artists in their late thirties who have practiced studio art for approximately ten years. Notably, there was an outstanding number of artists working with new media, such as video and sound, as well as traditional media, such as sculpture. As usual, the task of selecting a single recipient among numerous exceptional candidates was formidable. The weight of this responsibility necessitated careful deliberation from the phase of recommending artists. The criteria for the DOOSAN Yonkang Arts Award are straightforward: candidates must be under forty years of age and cannot have previously been artists-in residence at DOOSAN. Consequently, nominators/jury must reflect on the intent and implications of other award systems. The predominance of late-thirties artists working in video and new media can be seen as a reflection of the jury' aim to introduce distinctive criteria and foster differentiation from other awards.

Among the candidates recommended by the three nominators/jury, a fortunate overlap occurred over one artist. While such intersectionality did not guarantee a win for that artist, it did play a pivotal role in establishing the criteria for "potential for development." The uniqueness of each candidate's oeuvre often rendered direct comparisons challenging. However, the anticipated impact of the award on each artist's practices allowed for a more comparative evaluation. The criteria for evaluation centered on how certain factors—the volume of work necessary for a solo exhibition in a mid-sized gallery, the opportunity to experiment with artistic language alongside a curatorial team, and the experience within the specific context of New York—might influence the recipient. After much discussion based on these criteria, the jury selected Yeoreum Jeong as the final recipient.

Yeoreum Jeong began a professional art practice immediately after finishing her undergraduate studies in 2020. Having presented at numerous film festivals, Yeoreum Jeong has demonstrated vigorous practice despite her relatively brief career. Her work, which explores themes of war, nationhood, visual apparatus, and the relationship between the representation of places and memory through the medium of video, explores places over a long time and deftly intertwines autobiographical experiences and observations to draw out the visible and invisible aspects of given locations. Here, while her method of narration presents the places and times as personal, it simultaneously exposes the underlying system structures of the history and capital embedded in those locations. Additionally, Yeoreum Jeong's fluid exploration and integration of self-shot scenes, historically contextualized found footage, and technically created 3D imagery underscores her exceptional and illustrious sensibility in video production and narrative construction.

With this award, we anticipate that Yeoreum Jeong will engage deeply with the meanings of memory and place within a new environment or find opportunities for reflection through distance. We also look forward to her growth as an artist who is capable of exploring how her work is presented and interpreted within the exhibition format and navigating seamlessly between the white cube and black box contexts.

Jury Seong Eun Kim, Mun Hye Jin, Gahee Park