Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing Announces 2019 Blue Prize Winners

At a ceremony in Beijing’s 798 Art District on Tuesday, November 19, Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing named the winners of its third annual juried competition for curatorial projects. The first award of the evening was for the Hyundai Blue Prize for Creativity, which went to the Hangzhou-based curator duo, Chen Min and Zhang Yehong. The Hyundai Blue Prize for Sustainability was subsequently conferred to Shanghai-based curator Chen Jiaying. Each of the prize winners will be granted RMB 600,000 (USD 85,300) to realize an exhibition in 2020 at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, whose program will focus on the concept of “Social Intelligence,” exploring social changes and issues arising from technological transformations.

Chen Min and Zhang Yehong will hold their exhibition in March 2020, looking at how technology can build social relationships through the framework of relationship-building games that allow for the experimentation of such formations. Chen has participated in curatorial projects at Shanghai’s Ming Contemporary Art Museum and Hangzhou’s China Academy of Art. She is also a photographer and a multimedia artist. Curator, painter and multimedia artist Zhang’s recent curatorial work include, among others, exhibitions at Hangzhou’s Xiangshan Art Commune. 

In June, Chen Jiaying’s exhibition will utilize online dating software to examine how human emotions and connections are shaped by technology. Chen was previously shortlisted for Shanghai’s 2018 PSA Emerging Curators Project. She has recently curated exhibitions at E.M Bannister Art Gallery, Roberts Hall of Rhode Island College, Providence.

The awardees were chosen from a shortlist of applicants who worked with jury members to develop their proposals. The 2019 jury panel consisted of Stephanie Rosenthal, director of Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau; academic Gao Minglu; artist Qiu Zhijie from China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts; Joel Ferree, Art + Technology Lab program director at Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Karen Smith, director of OCAT Xi’an; and Martin Honzik, senior director of Austria’s media arts organization, Ars Electronica. The other finalists of this year’s award include Fu Liaoliao, Li Boyan, Tang Yuzhen, and Wang Dongdong.

The announcements coincided with the opening of Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing’s latest group exhibition, “Human (Un)Limited: Between Human Limitations and Limited Humanity,” co-curated by Martin Honzik and Fei Jun, professor of Art + Technology program at Beijing’s School of Design, Central Academy of Fine Art. The show features 16 international artists whose works address the paradoxes and problems arising from the close connection of human culture and human technology.

HG Masters is ArtAsiaPacific’s deputy editor and deputy publisher.

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