How Did Rallies Become "Images to Be Seen"? Hong Jinhwon Wins Korea Artist Prize

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and the SBS Cultural Foundation name the final winner of the Korea Artist Prize 2026
Former foreign correspondent explores the relationship between images and power through photography and vide

Street demonstrations are sites of resistance, but they are also scenes staged for the camera. Slogans and gestures are recorded on video, and the images take on new meanings as they circulate. What if photographs and videos that document reality instead determine how we see it? Hong Jin-hwon, 46, whose work explores the power relations embedded in images, has been selected as the final award recipient of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea's Korea Artist Prize 2026.

Artist Hong Jin-hwon, selected as the final award recipient of the 2026 Artist of the Year, jointly presented by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and the SBS Cultural Foundation. Hong has explored how sites of rallies and struggles are reconstructed as images, and the social and political power relations embedded in this process, using photography, video, web programming, and other media. National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and the SBS Cultural Foundation announced on October 28 that Hong Jin-hwon had been selected as the final award recipient. Hong was one of four artists chosen for this year's support program, alongside Lee Hae-minseon, Lee Jeongwoo, and Jeon Hyunseon, and has been presenting new works at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul, since July. He was selected following public discussions with domestic and international jurors, a discussion with audience participation on October 27, and a final closed-door review.

Born in 1980, Hong Jin-hwon draws on his experience as a foreign correspondent to explore how images document and reconstruct social events, using photography, video, web programming, and other media. His work began with witnessing and documenting demonstrations and struggles firsthand, but his interests have since expanded to examine how recorded images are created and consumed, and what power relations they reveal.

The exhibition's featured work, The Highest Form of the Image Is Armed Struggle (2026), takes its title from a 1971 declaration by the Japanese Red Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine: "The highest form of propaganda is armed struggle." The artist layers the radical language of past revolutionary movements over scenes of demonstrations in contemporary Korea.

The 32-minute-and-50-second video interweaves ballet footage from the Cultural Revolution, interviews with demonstration organizers, and reinterpreted protest songs and gestures. Hong Jin-hwon asks what meaning the language of revolutions that once sought to overthrow existing systems holds today. He also focuses on how demonstrations become images that can be anticipated and controlled through staging, choreography, and slogans designed for the camera.

Another new work, Actually, the Milky Way Is a Ghost (2026), examines landscapes of places where tragedy has passed. The artist combines photographs of political landscapes he has taken with images from the astronomical research of Dutch astronomer and socialist thinker Anton Pannekoek.

Pannekoek understood the Milky Way not only as a collection of individual stars, but also in relation to the gaze observing it. Hong Jin-hwon applies this perspective to landscapes in the aftermath of tragedy. Places where events have occurred may appear to have returned to peaceful everyday life, yet they take on different meanings depending on the memories and perceptions of those who view them. The work asks how photographs can preserve and convey traces of events that are no longer visible.

Installation view of Hong Jinhwon's video work *The Highest Form of the Image Is Armed Struggle* (2026), by an artist selected as a finalist for the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea's Korea Artist Prize 2026. The work explores how sites of resistance and struggle are reconstructed as images, juxtaposing slogans from past revolutionary movements with scenes from contemporary demonstrations. National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Photo by Hong Cheolgi.

International jurors praised Hong Jin-hwon for treating images not as mere records of social events, but as mediums that shape the meaning of reality.

Charmaine Toh, Deputy Head of Curatorial at Tate Modern in the United Kingdom, said, "Hong Jin-hwon's work reveals the tension between social practice and the process by which it is represented as an image, while questioning the visual systems through which we see and understand reality."

Emma Enderby, Director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany, said she was impressed by "the way images and records from different eras and contexts are brought together." She added that the work compellingly shows how images both convey events and reconstruct their meaning.

Hong Jin-hwon came to prominence after receiving the 11th Photography Criticism Award in 2009. His solo exhibitions include Temporary Landscape (2013), Red, Green (2014), The Last Night(s) (2015), Write-Protected Mode (2016), Random Forest (2018), and Melting Ice Cream (2021).

He participated in the Seoul Mediacity Biennale in 2021 and the Busan Biennale in 2024. In 2025, he presented Title Match: There Is No Middle Ground with Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries at the Seoul Museum of Art's Buk-Seoul Museum of Art. In 2022, he received the Beautiful Migrant Goose Award at the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival and the Peace Award at the Busan Peace Film Festival, among other honors.

The Korea Artist Prize is a program supporting contemporary Korean artists, jointly run by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and the SBS Cultural Foundation since 2012. Each year, four artists are selected for support and receive assistance to create and exhibit new work, after which a final award recipient is chosen. Each selected artist receives 50 million won in creative support, and the final award recipient receives an additional 10 million won.

Yoon Tae-wook, Acting Director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, said, "Hong Jin-hwon shows that images are not merely a means of documenting reality, but a condition that shapes the meaning and memory of social events." He added, "His work encourages us to reconsider the visual systems and power relations we have long taken for granted."

The Korea Artist Prize 2026 exhibition, featuring works by Hong Jin-hwon, Lee Hae-minseon, Lee Jeongwoo, and Jeon Hyunseon, runs through December 6 at Galleries 1 and 2 of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul. Visitors can see around 100 works, including paintings, photographs, videos, and sculptures, as well as archival materials.

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