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Choi Goen Wins 2024 Frieze Seoul Award
By Mioie Kwok
Portrait of CHOI GOEN. Photo by Kanghyuk Lee. Courtesy Frieze Seoul.
On June 24, Seoul-based installation artist Choi Goen was named the winner of the 2024 Frieze Seoul Artist Award, which grants an emerging or midcareer artist the opportunity to realize a new body of work. Choi’s installation will be presented at the third edition of Frieze Seoul, scheduled to take place from September 4 to 7, 2024, at the COEX Convention & Exhibition Center in Gangnam, Seoul.
Born in 1985, Choi has developed a practice that involves transforming commonplace objects such as furniture and domestic appliances into interactive installations and sculptures. The repurposed objects represent production, distribution, disposal, and recycling—a cyclical process that Choi uses to explore the systems behind contemporary industrial society and the urban infrastructures that facilitate its operation. Her work has previously been showcased at the Art Sonje Center (2023), Amado Art Space (2022), Buk-Seoul Museum of Art (2022), and P21 Gallery (2021).
Choi’s commission for Frieze Seoul will showcase two new large-scale sculptures, White Home Wall: Welcome and Gloria. Envisioned as a performative experience, the installation will present dynamic interactions between positions, angles, and rhythms that will directly engage with the COEX exhibition space, examining the intricate relationship of art, technology, and urban landscapes. Speaking to the press, Frieze Seoul director Patrick Lee stated: “I am delighted that the Artist Award at Frieze Seoul remains a cornerstone of our programming for a second year . . . We are privileged to showcase artists of Goen’s caliber at Frieze Seoul, and eagerly anticipate our audience discovering more about her remarkable work.”
Goen was selected by an international jury comprising Sungah Serena Choo, curator of contemporary art at the Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; Yung Ma, senior curator at the Hayward Gallery in London; Kim Sung woo, curator and director of nonprofit art organization Primary Practice; and Korean multimedia artist Jeon Joonho.
Last year’s inaugural Frieze Seoul Artist Award was awarded to Korean artist Woo Hannah, who presented her fabric installation The Great Ballroom (2023) at the contemporary art fair.
Mioie Kwok is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.
