South Korean artist Im Youngzoo has been named the recipient of this year’s Frieze Seoul Artist Award, following her recent nomination for the 2025 Korea Artist Prize.

Born in 1982 in Busan, Im is known for her practice that bridges personal narrative, collective memory, and the tension between spiritual belief and scientific rationality. Spanning various media—including video, installation, performance, and virtual reality technology—her work probes how societies create meaning from the unseen and the imagined. 

Now in its third year, the Frieze Seoul Artist Award offers a Korea-based emerging and midcareer artist the opportunity to realize a major new commission at Frieze Seoul, which will be held at COEX from September 3–6. Im’s winning project, Calming Signal (2023/25), is a research-driven, three-channel video installation set within a grid-like structure. As the title suggests, the work draws on the concept of “calming signals” (instinctual, repetitive behavioral cues used by dogs to de-escalate aggression among one another), linking these to human gestures and rituals during times of collective anxiety. The project will be unveiled as a centerpiece of the fair’s curated program, responding to its 2025 theme of “Future Commons.”

Im’s selection was made by a distinguished jury of art world figures, including Yeon Shim Chung, professor of art history and theory at Hongik University; Gabriel Ritter, director of the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Venus Lau, director of Museum MACAN in Jakarta; South Korean artist Minouk Lim; and Jaeseok Kim, former editor-in-chief of Art in Culture magazine. Previous recipients of the Frieze Seoul Artist Award include Woo Hannah and Choi Goen, both of whom gained significant international attention following their commissions.

In parallel, Im is one of four finalists for the 2025 Korea Artist Prize, which is awarded by Seoul’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) in partnership with the SBS Foundation. The other nominees are Kim YoungEun, Kim Jipyeong, and the collective Unmake Lab.

Anna Dickie is a writer and editor based in New Zealand.