Michelle Y. Hyun, Director/curator, The ICA at NYU Shanghai
Michelle Yeonho Hyun makes exhibitions and events with artists and others. She sometimes writes and talks about art, among other things. She is the founding director and curator of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) at NYU Shanghai since 2018. She worked previously as a curator for Shanghai Project (2016), Gwangju Biennale (2014), and the University of California San Diego (2012-14). She has also organized projects for the New Museum (New York, 2012), Creative Time (New York, 2011), and What, How & for Whom (WHW) (Zagreb, 2010). She studied curating at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS) at Bard College and political economy at George Washington University.
Hyejung Jang, Chief curator, Doosan Art Center, Seoul
Hyejung Jang is a contemporary art curator based in Seoul. She is currently a chief curator of DOOSAN Art Center: DOOSAN Gallery and a co-founder of WESS; a curatorial collective initiative. She also has been co-advising Focus Asia at Frieze Seoul 2022~2024; the special section of the fair that focuses on Asia based cutting-edge galleries. Jang curated and/or collaborated with prolific projects including Through the Parlor (NLE, New York, 2014), MMCA HYUNDAI MOTOR SERIES 2015: Ahn Kyuchul (MMCA, Seoul, 2015), Scatter and Gather (INSA Art Space, Seoul, 2016), Snow Screen (Archive Bomm, Seoul, 2017), Afterimage (DOOSAN Gallery New York, New York, 2018), AP Asia 2020: Hare Way Object (Deoksoogung Palace, Seoul, 2020), We’re all sick and in love (WESS, Seoul, 2021), Though We Dance (CosMo 40, Incheon, 2021), 2021-2022 SFAC: earth and the art (SFAC, Seoul, 2021-2022), Natural Born Odds (Salihara Art Center, Jakarta, Indonesia, 2023/WESS Project) and etc.
Joanne Kim, Independent curator, Seoul
Joanne Kim is an independent curator with a keen interest in the formal qualities and relationships between image, sound, and technology, Kim has curated and organized numerous art performances and exhibitions. In 2024, she serves as the artistic director for the “Rabbit Inhabits the Moon” project in Turin, Italy, commemorating the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and Korea. This project connects the Nam June Paik Art Center and Fondazione Torino Musei (Turin Museums Foundation). Additionally, she co-organizes the “Curating School Seoul(2023~).”
In 2017, she launched the Interdisciplinary Arts Festival “NON-SENSE MUSIC” during PARIS ART WEEK. Supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Berlin, the festival held its second edition at the Bethanien Art Center in 2018, exploring “Borders” with six Korean and Berlin-based artists.
Previously, Joanne held positions as the artistic director at the K11 Culture Foundation in Shanghai, program director at ‘ASIA NOW – Paris Asian Art Fair,’ and as an art consultant with the Esther Schipper Gallery in Berlin.
In 2022, she directed the interdisciplinary project “Fluxo” at the Seosomun Historical Museum in Seoul as part of Nam June Paik’s 90th birthday tribute. Recent invitations to serve as a guest curator include institutions such as the Total Museum, Gangneung International Art Festival, and Samcheong Museum HANMI.
Sooyoung Leam, Independent curator, Seoul
Sooyoung Leam is an art historian and curator based in Seoul. She specializes in modern and contemporary art with a particular focus on East Asia. Her ongoing research on archives explores intersections between sculpture, performance and politics. She studied History of Art at Cambridge University and completed her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her written work has been published in numerous academic journals and edited volumes, including Sculpture Journal, and Journal of History of Modern Art. She is currently Assistant Curator of the 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023). Her recent curatorial projects include Spirals, Loops, Mutants (Shanghai, 2023) and To A Faraway Friend: Beyond Afro-Southeast Asian Affinities (Busan, 2022). Sooyoung teaches at Seoul National University and Kyunghee University.
Juli Yoon, Chief curator, Ilmim Art Museum, Seoul
Juli Yoon has been working as a Chief Curator at Ilmin Museum of Art (2021~), a co-curator of curatorial platform WESS (2022~), and a member of Agency AURORA (2020~). He has curated exhibitions that reflect the characteristic visual elements of the contemporary era, in collaboration with artists, researchers, institutions, and corporations across various fields. His notable projects include Foreverism (2024), examining the intersection of image proliferation and ‘history writing’ in the context of highly accelerated capitalism through the theory of foreverism; two exhibitions comparing pictorial representation in Britain and Korea post-2000s, I Like To Watch (2023) and Hysteria (2023); and Korean Traditional Painting in Alter-age (2022), contrasting the museum’s modern collection with Korean paintings as a genre to revisit Asia’s distorted modernity. He has previously worked for the curatorial team of AP Asia (2020), the publishing team of the international typography biennale ‘Typojanchi’ (2016), and the office of the international interdisciplinary festival ‘Festival Bo:m’ (2015). As an independent curator (2014~2019), he has garnered interest in translating various contemporary issues into art exhibitions, with support from the Korea Arts Council, the Korean Publishers Association, and the Korea Craft & Design Foundation, focusing on Korean literature, street fashion, modern hobbies and colonialism. He has authored several books on the institutional trends and key artists of Korean art. He continues his active involvement in the field, with his activities encompassing roles such as teaching at art colleges.
Mi You, Professor, Art and Economies at the University of Kassel / documenta Institut, Kassel
You Mi is a professor of Art and Economies at the University of Kassel / documenta Institut. Prior to joining the University of Kassel, she was a research associate in the Art and Media Studies department at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (2014-2021). Her academic interests are in new and historical materialism, performance philosophy, as well as the history, political theory and philosophy of Eurasia.
She works with the Silk Road as a figuration for re-imagining networks, and has curated exhibitions and programs at Asian Culture Center in Gwangju, South Korea, Ulaanbaatar International Media Art Festival, Mongolia (2016), Zarya CCA, Vladivostok (2018), and the research/curatorial platform “Unmapping Eurasia” (2018-) with Binna Choi. Her recent exhibitions focus on socializing technologies and “actionable speculations”, such as “Sci-(no)-Fi” at the Academy of the Arts of the World, Cologne (2019) and “Lonely Vectors” at Singapore Art Museum (2022). She was one of the curators of the 13th Shanghai Biennale (2020-2021). On the social front, she serves as chair of committee on Media Arts and Technology for the transnational NGO Common Action Forum.
