ArtAsiaPacific Announces Winners of Second Young Writers Contest

ArtAsiaPacific is pleased to announce the results of its second Young Writers Contest, judging from a competitive selection of 15 entries submitted by writers from across the globe. In 2019, AAP invited writers to respond to one of two themes: art and its relationship with the environment, or memes as political art.

In first place is Harry C. H. Choi, who, noting the lack of political satire in South Korea, analyzes the conditions for free expression in South Korea through the works of artists Hong Song-dam, Minouk Lim, and Kim Heecheon. His winning essay can be found in the September/October issue of AAP, out on September 1. Choi is currently Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. He previously worked in the department of media and performance art at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the department of visual and environmental studies at Harvard University.

In second place is Rosanna Lee, whose essay examines the construction of artificial worlds—such as in the works of Ian Cheng, Miao Ying, and Shih Chieh Huang—as a vehicle for engaging with real environmental issues. An artist, writer, and researcher based in London, Lee most recently participated in the inaugural Shanghai Curators Lab in 2018, led by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Yongwoo Lee. Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and DRAF Studio, London.

In third place is Nathan Geyer, who maps sociologist and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard’s theory of the “desert of the real” onto real-life cases of digital interference, desertification, and displacement, traced in the works of John Gerrard, Ju Anqi, and Fazal Sheikh. A London-based writer focusing on art, film, and music, Geyer was previously shortlisted for the Frieze Writer’s Prize in 2015, and will be reading for an MPhil in Film and Screen Studies at the University of Cambridge from 2019 to 2020.

The winners of last year’s inaugural contest are Asia Society curator Joyce Wong, former Asia Society assistant curator and independent artist-illustrator Kaitlin Chan, and independent researcher and writer Najrin Islam.