2018 Nam June Paik Art Center Prize awarded to Trevor Paglen

Special Talk:
November 30, 2018, 3pm

Prize Ceremony: 
November 30, 2018, 5pm

Nam June Paik Art Center is pleased to announce that the Selection Committee of Nam June Paik Art Center Prize has selected Trevor Paglen(b.1974, USA) as the winner of the 2018 Prize. KimHong-hee, head of The Selection Committee said, “Paglen allusively exposes the secret surveillance equipment of the military and intelligence organizations by means of different mediums such as photography, video, sculpture and installation. Starting from Drone Vision to his recent work A Study of Invisible Images with its enigmatic paradox of ‘invisible image,’ his series of demapping and remapping unveils the digital world’s contradiction and internal violence in a political and metaphorical way.” Jin Suk Suh, director of Nam June Paik Art Center, one of the Selection Committee members, commented as follows: “Trevor Paglen has studied and interpreted the infrastructures of our society’s invisible politics, cultural surveillance and technopower. At the same time, he has constantly suggested a future vision with his own unique attitude for creative work.”

The winner, Trevor Paglen, has expressed, “it’s an incredible honor to be awarded the Nam June Paik Art Center Prize. Nam June Paik was an incredible visionary, an artist who taught us how to see a rapidly changing world, and a huge inspiration to me personally. To be recognized in relation to Nam June Paik is truly one of the greatest honor I can imagine.” Paglen will be awarded KRW 50,000,000, and have the opportunity to hold a solo exhibition at Nam June Paik Art Center in 2019. Paglen will be invited to Korea on the 30th of November 2018 for the Prize Ceremony and special talk.

The Nam June Paik Art Center Prize was established in 2009. Since its inception, the Prize has been awarded to artists and theorists whose works are very much in tune with Paik’s work amalgamating art and technology, pursuing new ways of communication, interacting with audiences, and fusing and conflating music, performance and visual art. The first Prize was awarded in 2009 to four artists, Seung-Taek Lee, Eun-Me Ahn, Ceal Floyer, and Robert Adrian X; philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour won the 2010 Prize; the 2012 Prize went to artist Doug Aitken; the winner of the 2014 Prize was Haroon Mirza and the 2016 Prize went to artist collective Blast Theory.

For Nam June Paik Art Center Prize, ten Nominating Committee members proposed ten candidates respectively; a separate Selection Committee reviewed ten candidates and selected the final winner.

The Nominating Committee members were:

Sung Won Kim (Artistic Director, Asia Culture Center, Korea)
Hae-Ju Kim (Deputy Director, Art Sonje Center, Korea)
Tobias Berger (Artistic Director, Tai Kwun, Hong Kong)
Alexie-Glass Kantor (Director, Art Space, Australia)
Mark B.N. Hansen (Media Critic/Professor, Duke University, USA)
Philipp Ziegler (Chief Curator, ZKM center for Art and Media, Germany)
Omar Kholief (Independent Curator, Egypt)
Curatorial Department (Nam June Paik Art Center, Korea)

The Selection Committee members were:

Kim Hong-hee (Art Critic/ Former Director, Seoul Museum of Art, Korea)
Jin Suk Suh (Director, Nam June Paik Art Center, Korea)
Jonathan Watkins (Director, IKON Gallery, UK)
Mami Kataoka (Chief Curator, Mori Art Museum, Japan)
Inke Arns (Director, Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Germany)

For press enquiries, contact: 
www.njpartcenter.kr / T +82 31 201 8559 / F +82 31 201 8548 / excitinglunch [​at​] njpartcenter.kr