Jury’s Statement

It’s fascinating to ask what utterances contemporary artists make, and how they can be articulated through specific mediums, such as video. In respect to such questions, what significance lies in selecting artist Yunyi Yi as the winner of the DOOSAN Artist Award of this year?

Yunyi Yi’s work may not be the kind that instantly captures everyone’s gaze at once. To read her work, one would have to take a few steps back, and gaze at the subtle transition of the scenes. ‘Taking a few steps back’ has several layers of meaning. The subject which the artist deals with and the emotional resonance and lyricism provoked by her work is quite personal and of a poetic realm; therefore, the audience must also take a few steps back and awaken the deepmost experiences within them. On the other hand, a characteristic of taking a few steps back lies in the fact that, while Yi mainly deals with video, her work maintains a certain distance from the indulgence and immersion into the technology of the medium contrary to the trends in contemporary video. Furthermore, limiting her work to merely ‘video’ may be a very narrow way of appreciating the work; thus, Yi’s work strongly requests the physical necessity of ‘taking a few steps back.’

The sense of proficiency and sensibility in the medium is an important criterion of evaluation in art today. Although there is a universal phenomenon of artists dealing simultaneously with multiple mediums, the fundamental ability in the artist’s understanding and handling of each of the mediums is often overlooked. In the case of Yi, her sensibility in leading the emotions through music and text, her sharp sense of performance, and her ability to play variations on the video to object installations and a completely disparate stage is evenly detailed and thoroughly harmonious.
Above all, this sense of adaptation and harmony is not a result of a tranquil contentment with the self, but a sensitive response to the ultimate ruptures and disintegrations that take place around the artist herself and her world. While some voiced concerns that Yi’s work overtly focuses on personal history in terms of its subject, the woman’s body and its internal exploration are not a subject that must be overlooked in comparison to the macro sociopolitical issues. Yi’s portrayal of the world, strangely displaced and expanded through others and objects as shown in her recent solo exhibition, Client, makes us look forward to her anxious and disturbing perspective in the future.

Judging committee: Sungwon Kim, Hae Jin Pahng, Sohyun Ahn