Hyundai Motor Reveals Awardee of Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021

·  Hyundai Motor announces Somi Sim as the Awardee of the Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021, themed ‘Value of Time,’ at exclusive award ceremony held at Hyundai Motorstudio Busan.

·  Somi Sim’s award-winning proposal Do you miss the future? re-examines various questions on the future of time through the lens of design.

·  Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021 is an award that fosters a new generation of design curators and gives recognition to their exceptional insights and curatorial skills.

·  Each year, the Awardee of the Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021 will be awarded the opportunity to showcase their design exhibition at the Hyundai Motorstudio Busan. 

BUSAN, April 27, 2021 – Today, Hyundai Motor announced the Awardee of the Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021 at the Hyundai Motorstudio Busan. The Awardee was selected from five finalists of this year’s award. Launched in 2021, Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021 is an award programme initiated by Hyundai Motor under its vision of “Progress for Humanity,” to foster a new generation of creative curators and give recognition to their exceptional insights and curatorial skills. The award aims to cultivate a deeper understanding on the importance of design by highlighting how design plays a significant role to everyday life.

This year, the award was presented to the proposal titled Do you miss the future? by Somi Sim, a Seoul and Paris-based independent curator and researcher specialized in architectural engineering and art theory. Do you miss the future? re-examines various questions on the future of time through the lens of design, widening our perception and imagination of the intersection of nature and history, matter and non-matter, subject and object, and memories and city. Sim’s proposal received high marks for its impressive selection of artists and designers, and how each element of the exhibition redesigns the “reality” of architecture and industry.

Sim has won the opportunity to showcase the design exhibition at Hyundai Motorstudio Busan from November 2021 until February 2022. Other benefits provided to the Awardee include a cash prize worth KRW 15 million and the chance to participate in the Boisbuchet Workshop - a week-long workshop held at Domaine de Boisbuchet in the south-west of France which invites the most inspiring architects and designers from across the world.

The theme of Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021 is‘Value of Time,’ which focuses on modern daily lives rapidly changing through technological development. The Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021 reflects on the idea of time from diverse perspectives on life - tradition and memories built upon the past, the dynamics of evolving time that creates something new, and the grand cycle of the four seasons and our lives.

“It is incredible to see how each finalist distinctively interpreted the meaning of the ‘Value of Time’ and translated this into their exhibition submissions. Through Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021, we hope to open up more conversations on a variety of themes reflecting contemporary issues,” said Sungwon Jee, Vice President and Head of Global Experiential Marketing at Hyundai Motor Group. “Based on our belief that design has the power to reinvent our everyday lives, we will continue the Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021 to further cultivate the area of ‘design curation’ and become a platform for design curators to experiment and share their ideas with the global audience.”

During the award ceremony, congratulatory remarks were given by Jee and adjudicators Nicolas Le Moigne and Mateo Kries via video conference. The ceremony also featured a short video on the works of the five finalists including Somi Sim, an independent curator and researcher based in Seoul and Paris; Juli Yoon, a critic/editor who works for various art projects mainly related to the visualization of Seoul; Pooroni Rhee, an illustrator and graphic designer based in Seoul; Jiu Jang and Daniel Kapelian of OMA Space, an artist group; and Juri Cho, an independent curator and researcher. Through the Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021, the finalists were provided with the opportunity to take part in global networking events and various other initiatives to promote their work. Prior to the award ceremony, the five artists had participated in an online Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021 Symposium held in March earlier this year, where they met with design experts to discuss various subjects on design curation and shared their views on the theme ‘Value of Time.’

All works submitted for the Hyundai Blue Prize Design 2021 had been evaluated by a panel of adjudicators, including Kyungsun Kymn, Professor of visual communication design at Seoul National University; Sung Won Kim, Artistic Director of Asia Culture Center, Gwangju; Bora Hong, Founder of art space FACTORY 2; Mateo Kries, Director of Vitra Design Museum and Nicolas Le Moigne, Head of the Master Programme of Advanced Studies in Design for Luxury & Craftsmanship ECAL/Lausanne University of Art and Design.

Meanwhile, Hyundai Blue Prize Art + Tech has been held in Beijing since 2017 to inspire the next generation of art curators and provide them with a comprehensive understanding of the art and technology sphere. Every year, the Hyundai Blue Prize Art + Tech provides mentoring programme for emerging art curators in China and provides the winner the opportunity to realize his or her Art + Tech themed exhibition at the Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.