Hyundai Motor Company is pleased to announce the five finalists of the Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025 Open Call: Cora Yubin Luo & Karen Keshi Lin, Hyejin Park & Yoonyoung Park, Kun Ruan, Yifeng Wei & Penny Dan Xu, and Jielei Zou & Xue Sun. (Listed in alphabetical order by last name)

 

Hyundai Blue Prize+, established as a laboratory for emerging curators, invites curators to explore the most pressing contemporary issues, in connection with the context of Asia through curatorial proposals for Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing. Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025 received more than 160 applications from curators across the globe, challenging curatorial practices and bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives and research.

 

Following a thorough and rigorous review of the submissions, five finalist teams have been selected by the Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025 international jury panel comprised of: Jochen Eisenbrand, Chief Curator, Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein); Carol K. Huh, Associate Curator of Contemporary Asian Art, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.); Frances Morris, former Director of Tate Modern (London) and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Ewha Womans University (Seoul); Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); Philip Tinari, Director, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing).

 

“The selected proposals were outstanding and convincing in taking focused, original, and inventive approaches to their respective exhibition theme and bringing together artworks that will create an atmospherically strong experience.”

 

“Subjects range from the digital realm to the human body, from exploitation to extraction, from geopolitical issues to energy matters. The artists proposed by the curators work in a multitude of different media, from sculptures and installations to photography and film to media art and immersive environments.”

 

“Collectively, the competing proposals for the Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025 reflect and interrogate the deeply unsettled times Asia is facing at a time of unprecedented technological acceleration, deepening geopolitical uncertainty and escalating ecological breakdown. These urgencies are expressed and explored in the wide range of compelling artistic projects from across the region selected by this impressive cohort of emerging curators.”

 

- Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025 jury panel

 

The finalist program begins with one-to-one mentorship with members of the jury panel along with an opportunity to participate in a research trip to Beijing to explore Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing as the site for the exhibition and engage with audiences and communities of Beijing including the 798 Art District.

 

Each of the five finalist teams will receive a grant to further develop their curatorial proposals to present in November 2025 to the Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025 jury panel. Two final awardees will be selected from among the finalist teams to present their exhibitions at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing with each awardee receiving up to 800,000 RMB (approx. USD 110,000) for exhibition production and implementation.

 

Finalists:

 

 

Cora Yubin Luo & Karen Keshi Lin

 

Cora Yubin Luo is an independent curator based in Guangzhou, China. She focuses on individual expressions that have been obscured or silenced by dominant historical narratives and social structures, and considers art practices as resistance. Luo holds a master’s degree in Design History and Theory from the China Academy of Art. From 2017 to 2024, she held curatorial positions at China Design Museum of China Academy of Art, Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA), and contributed to public program projects at Shanghai Rockbund Art Museum and Shanghai HOW Art Museum. From 2021 to 2023, she was part of the curatorial team for Durian Durian: The First Trans-Southeast Asia Triennial. She was shortlisted for the 2024 Emerging Curators Project at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai.

Her recent curatorial projects include Caorenhuo: Wake Up on a Festival Day (Canton Gallery, Guangzhou, 2025); Karen Lin Keshi: A Letter Never Arrived (Making Space, Guangzhou, 2024); Bodies in the Classroom: A Case Exhibition of Academic Teaching and Practice with the Body as a Medium (Art Museum of GAFA, Guangzhou, 2024); Sowing Community – Phase I of HE Interaction Project (He Foundation, Shunde, 2023); Durian Durian: Southeast Asian Studies as a Methodology (Art Museum of GAFA, Guangzhou, 2023); Overland and Oversea: Pok Chi Lau’s Cultural Photography Exhibition of Chinese in Myanmar (Art Museum of GAFA, Guangzhou, 2021/2023); Does It Matter that We’ve Just Met, If Our Hearts Understand: Two Responses to Social Practice (Art Museum of GAFA, Guangzhou, 2022), and Bauhaus Imaginista: Moving Away (China Design Museum of CAA, Hangzhou, 2018).

 

Karen Keshi Lin is an independent curator, writer, and filmmaker based in Guangzhou, China. Her curatorial and artistic practices focus on marginalized communities, mobility and migration, and socialist industrial heritage. Lin holds a master’s degree in Design History and Theory from the China Academy of Art, and formerly worked at the China Design Museum of the China Academy of Art, the Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, and He Art Museum from 2017 to 2022. From 2022, she has joined Social Practice Lab and curated socially engaged art projects. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the 2024 Emerging Curators Project at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai.

Exhibitions and public programs Lin has curated or contributed to include: He Interaction Project: Drifting Lands Artist Residency Program (He Foundation, Shunde, 2024); Live, Work—13 Years of Social Sensibility R&D Department (Goethe-Institut, Beijing, 2023); Open Group: We were Somewhere Among You (QianTai (osf), Guangzhou, 2022); Bernar Venet: The Game of Ambiguity (He Art Museum, Shunde, 2021); Lifeworld: Western Modern Design from the Museum Collection (China Design Museum, Hangzhou, 2018), among others. Her writings have been published in ArtReview Asia and ARTFORUM China, and her translations appear in IAAC Exhibition Review Collection (IAAC8–9) and the Bauhaus Annual Journal (2019).

 

Hyejin Park & Yoonyoung Park

 

Hyejin Park is a curator based in Seoul, South Korea. Park received a master’s degree in Modern Art & the History of the Art Market from Christie’s Education, NY and a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from Seoul National University. Park is interested in presenting the diversity of individuals and researching the impact of Western culture on non-Western societies. She also seeks to explore various curating methods in contemporary visual culture. Park was the curatorial fellow of the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig in 2022. As part of the fellowship, she curated a solo exhibition of Meehye Lee entitled I Do What You Do What They Do (2022), which focused on the influence of social media on one’s behavior and taste. Park also co-curated Humor Has It (2021) at the Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin, presenting the humoristic viewpoints that Nam June Paik and the Fluxus movement had shared. Park curated two group exhibitions at the Coreana Museum of Art, Seoul.Youth Before Age (2019) focused on the rapidly aging society and the arising issue of ageism in the contemporary world; Hidden Workers (2018) introduced various works that dealt with women’s labor that is still largely undervalued and hidden.

 

Yoonyoung Park is a curator based in Seoul, South Korea. She received her M.A. in Art History from Hongik University in 2022. In recognition of the excellence of her master’s thesis, she was awarded a research scholarship from the Pony Chung Foundation, which was established to honor the philosophy and achievements of Chairman Se-yung Chung. Park is interested in exploring the positive role of art in contemporary society and the unique aesthetic sensibilities that only art can offer. At the Seoul Museum of Art, Park worked as a coordinator in the Exhibition & Education Division, where she contributed to the planning of major exhibitions such as Scoring the Words and The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. She also supported the organization of the international symposium Nam June Paik, Megatron, and Seoul Rhapsody, and was involved in research for exhibitions including Myonghi Kang – Visit and Sung Hwan Kim Solo Exhibition: Ua a‘o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia.

 

Kun Ruan

 

Kun Ruan is a Chinese curator and researcher based in Hangzhou, China, with a master’s degree in Creative Media from City University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on political and economic transformations in the technological era, particularly in relation to energy geopolitics, cryptocurrency governance, and the power structures of digital surveillance.

She has received the Mentorship Award for Cultural and Artistic Responses to Environmental Change from the Prince Claus Fund and the Goethe-Institut, and participated in DEconstruct and REbuild, organized by BJCEM and the European Union. Her curatorial projects include An Intransparent Game at Goethe-Institut China, and she was shortlisted for the OCAT Institute’s “Research Exhibition Curation Program.”

 

Yifeng Wei & Penny Dan Xu

 

Yifeng Wei is a curator, researcher, and PhD candidate in Visual Culture at the National College of Art and Design, Ireland. His research engages with the aesthetics of opacity as a critical framework for resistance against digital colonization and technological oppression. His curatorial and publishing projects—often involving critical writing and performative lectures—have been presented internationally at the NCAD Gallery (Ireland), The LAB Gallery (Ireland), LUX Pavilion (Germany), Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania), the University of Cambridge (UK), and Arizona State University (USA).

 

Dr. Penny Dan Xu is a London-based independent curator with 13 years of experience. She holds a PhD in Art History and is the founder of Across Platform, a not-for-profit research initiative. She also serves as an advisor to the art organization Baopu FELT. Her practice centers on collaborative research in the contemporary art field and beyond, with a commitment to slow thinking, cross-cultural dialogue, and independent knowledge production.

 

Jielei Zou & Xue Sun

 

Jielei Zou is a curator and researcher who holds an MRes in Exhibition Studies from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She was shortlisted for the 2024 Jimei x Arles Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image, and her curatorial projects have been presented in collaboration with venues including Sea World Culture and Arts Center, Chiwan No.1 Art Center, and Bomb Factory (London).

With a background in media studies, she approaches curating as a scalpel for dissecting technological power—focusing on algorithmic bias and the hidden infrastructures embedded in digital interfaces, particularly in net art and computational art. Drawing on examples like Documenta 15 and guerrilla-style curatorial practices in Southeast Asia and South China, she interrogates center–periphery dynamics within contemporary art systems.

 

Xue Sun is a game designer, researcher, and photographer. She holds an MRes in Exhibition Studies from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Apart from academic research, Sun was a script writer and executive director for an inclusive theater play project and play worker with inclusive education programs for children. Driven by heart and love, and sharpened through hands-on experience, her practice explores the intersections between game design, video game media and physical exhibition space, with a particular interest in their impact on the body, the construction of body memory, and what video games bring to the space, regarding the labor, techniques and different audience. With video games increasingly entering the realm of exhibitions, she focuses how the fusion of virtuality and reality reshapes institutions, artists, curators, audiences, and exhibition spaces.

 

For more information and updates, please visit the Hyundai Blue Prize+ website.