Blurring the Boundaries Between Humans and Machines, Reality and Imagination... Seoul Youth Biennale Winners Announced

Grand Prize to Subin Lim, Special Award to Yuhwasoo

Art Critic Award to Heejun So and Jeonghee Park
22 Young Artists Explore 'Post-Human' Theme

Special Exhibition to Be Held in Jeju in September

The winning works at this year's Seoul Youth Biennale, created by young artists, blend light and machines, plants and animals, and the human body, challenging the question: "Are humans truly the center of the world?"

The work of artist Soobin Lim, who won the grand prize at the 2026 Seoul Youth Biennale. Through light and moving structures, it expresses the relationships in which humans and objects, technology and the environment mutually influence each other. Seoul Youth Biennale Organizing Committee

The Seoul Youth Biennale Organizing Committee announced on August 20 that Soobin Lim received the Grand Prize at the 2026 Seoul Youth Biennale, while Yuh Wasu was awarded the Special Prize. The Art Critic Prize went to artists Heejun So and Junghui Park. This year's main exhibition, which opened on July 4, features 22 young artists and is themed "Post-Human."

In this exhibition, the term "Post-Human" does not refer to a new entity that appears after the disappearance of humanity. Instead, it proposes moving beyond a human-centered perspective to reconsider our relationships with nonhuman entities such as animals, plants, machines, objects, and data. Professor Hunmok Jung of the Academy of Korean Studies explained that the participating works convey the entanglement of humans and nonhumans not just as a conceptual notion but as a matter of "ontological sensibility."

Artistic Director Yemi Kim identified "flow" and "solidarity" as the twin pillars of this year's exhibition. The selection focused on works positioned at the boundaries of genre, medium, and being, highlighting the process through which different entities form new relationships without remaining fixed in one state.

Grand Prize winner Soobin Lim presented work using light and moving structures so that the entire space continuously changes. Instead of seeing a single completed scene, viewers experience a new state at every moment, in response to the direction and movement of the light. Art critic Jaeyoung Ahn described Lim's "Synthesize" as a process in which different elements do not merge into one but retain their distinctions—colliding and reflecting to create new states. The artist’s approach, in which humans and objects, technology and the environment mutually influence each other within the same moment rather than being subordinated to one side, was also highly praised.

Artwork by artist Yuh Wasu, recipient of the Special Prize at the 2026 Seoul Youth Biennale. The piece evokes traditional floral and bird paintings, blending flowers, horses, and figures from different seasons within the composition to create a virtual world that transcends real time and space. Seoul Youth Biennale Organizing Committee

Special Prize winner Yuh Wasu incorporated fabric objects into a composition reminiscent of traditional flower-and-bird paintings. On a single canvas, flowers, horses, boys, and girls from various seasons are depicted together. While borrowing the familiar format of a flower-and-bird painting, the work transforms it into a virtual world untethered from the temporal and spatial order of reality.

Critic Ahn interpreted this space as "one in which those exhausted by the norms and systems of reality recover their freedom through play and imagination." By intersecting painting and fabric, reality and fiction, the piece is regarded as opening up new possibilities beyond the real world.

A special exhibition carrying forward the critical questions raised by the Seoul Youth Biennale will also take place in Jeju. The "2026 Seoul Youth Biennale Special Exhibition – Invitational Artists" will be held at Cheongyu Gallery in Hallim-eup, Jeju City, from September 4 to 27.

The special exhibition features 28 artists, including Sujin Ahn, Jungmin Kim, Junghui Kim, Jooyeon Nam, Siyeon Kim, Junghui Park, Yemi Kim, and Kyungryul Yang. Through painting, installations, and mixed media, the show explores the challenges to anthropocentric perspectives and delves into questions of existence and relationships. The opening ceremony will take place at 3 p.m. on September 5.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.