Media artist Choi Chan Sook has been selected as the winner of Korea Artist Prize 2021. The award, which is presented by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) and SBS Foundation, is given to an artist who makes use of ‘innovative aesthetics to address the most compelling social issues of our time’.
Choi was chosen from a shortlist of four artists – the runners-up were Kim Sangjin, Bang Jeong-A, Oh Min – by a jury consisting of Youn Bummo (director of MMCA, Korea), Eugene Tan (director of Singapore Art Museum and National Gallery Singapore), Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala (artistic directors of Gwangju Biennale 2021), Choi Eun-ju (director of Daegu Art Museum) and Park So-hyun (professor at Seoul National University of Science and Technology). Choi was awarded the Korea Art Prize for her four-channel video installation qbit to adam (2021) which looks at the history of human labour and land ownership, physical and cryptocurrency mining, migration and immigration.
On the other side of the Pacific, the nonprofit grantmaker Artadia (which provides a platform for communities of artists, curators and patrons) has announced the winners of the Los Angeles Artadia Awards 2022. Esteban Ramón Pérez has been selected for the Angeles Art Fund Artadia Award, and Miller Robinson has been awarded the Capital Group Artadia Award; both artists will receive $10,000. dana washington-queen will receive the Marciano Art Foundation Artadia Award and be given $25,000. The other finalists were Chris Emile, Texas Isaiah Horatio-Valenzuela, and Yoshie Sakai.
The finalists and winners were selected by a panel comprising Alexandra Foradas (curator of visual art at MASS MoCA), Alexis Lowry (curator at Dia Art Foundation), Jennifer King (curator at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Christina Yang, (chief curator at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). In addition to its Los Angeles awards, Artadia supports awards in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, and New York.
