•Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech serves as a creative platform that recognizes and fosters a new generation of Chinese art curators to realize their exceptional potential.

•The Animal Farm Simulator by CHEN Jianghong and LI Zheng and Metamorphic Ecosphere by ZONG Xiao were selected as the grand winners of the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2023 for the theme "Decentralized Reworlding."

Beijing, December 16, 2022 —Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing announces two winning exhibitions for the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2023: CHEN Jianghong and LI Zheng's The Animal Farm Simulator and ZONG Xiao's Metamorphic Ecosphere. In their respective exhibitions, CHEN Jianghong and LI Zheng explore how humans, animals, and even nature can coexist in the post-epidemic era, while ZONG Xiao seeks to rethink and rebuild our current ecosystem and discusses how to adopt a new metamorphosis perspective.

Launched in 2017, Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech is an annual award program developed by Hyundai Motor to recognize and foster a new generation of Chinese creative curators through a wide range of professional support activities, including providing the grand winners with the opportunity to showcase their curatorial works at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing. Every year, a new theme is announced, aiming to inspire emerging Chinese curators to creatively and critically reflect on the most pressing issues of our time and to engage the public in a broader dialogue based on the winning exhibitions.

Among the five groups shortlisted in August this year, CHEN Jianghong and LI Zheng’s The Animal Farm Simulator and ZONG Xiao’s Metamorphic Ecosphere were selected by jurors, media professionals, and the public. Focusing on the theme "Decentralized Reworlding" for the year 2023, participants were required to creatively envision how to rebuild our decentralized life from the perspectives of art, technology, and the humanities.

Courtesy Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing

CHEN Jianghong is a creative planner and design researcher. LI Zheng is a curator, researcher of social innovation projects for children, and fashion designer. Their exhibition The Animal Farm Simulator is a bold and philosophical reflection on how to build a new ecology through co-creation, cooperation, and the sharing of their future-oriented curatorial practice. In an imaginative animism era, everything in nature is believed to have a soul, and when non-anthropocentrism becomes the norm, farms become the most important unit of production on a global scale. In their selected works, the curators build a "farm simulator," a future experimental field where humans and animals co-exist, presenting the entire farm biosphere as a network system that is composed of brain neurons connected by supergroup synergy and mutation.

Courtesy Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing

As a curator based in Shanghai, ZONG Xiao has a strong interest in the impact of technology on socio-economic structures and ecological structures. In her exhibition Metamorphic Ecosphere, ZONG Xiao explores, imagines, and reflects on alternative social, economic, and environmental structures from a non-human perspective in order to accept the "invasion" of other species and embrace a symbiotic or coexistent system between humans and non-humans. The exhibition encourages us to apply "Metamorphosis" to transform ourselves and contemplate our relationship with other species. Apart from opposition and competition, we also have transformation, transposition, diffusion, and interdependence. Metamorphosis facilitates interspecies communication, which lays the groundwork for genuine decentralization.

"The exhibition refers to George Orwell's classic in a contemporary and somewhat futuristic manner and demonstrates the new conditions of an animal-trans-human society that is turning totalitarianism into a kind of dystopic paradise. The project tends to create radically totalizing environments in which the public is entrapped and numbed. The presentation is humorous and ironic, while the selection of works is quite convincing," commented the senior juror HOU Hanru on CHEN and LI's exhibition proposal. Regarding ZONG's proposal, the senior juror Joel Ferree said, "It is an ambitious proposal in terms of scope. The applicant has a strong grasp of decentralization and its related ideas and makes strong points regarding Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, and the relationship between the different generations of networks. The use of exhibition models is very helpful in conveying the plan. The design is very strong. The context makes the works very compelling. It is easy to envision how well these works will go together as a coherent whole and how the exhibition will work with its public programs."

Over the entire course of the competition this year, the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech has provided the five groups of shortlisted candidates with research funds and professional development opportunities through a series of activities, such as online seminars and expert mentorship programs, helping them refine their fundamental curatorial skills, which will benefit their long-term professional careers.

"The Hyundai Blue Prize 2023 is to encourage creative and critical forms of reworlding through the arts, technology, and the humanities in order to ensure humanity's continued existence," said DooEun Choi, Hyundai Motor's Art Director. "The Prize will continue to activate art so as to spark dialogues about potential actions for our shared future."

As grand winners, CHEN Jianghong, LI Zheng, and ZONG Xiao are invited to curate their exhibitions at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing in 2023, with a grant of 600,000 yuan for each exhibition. Their exhibitions will follow those of the two grand winners of the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2022. Additionally, they will be further supported in exhibition promotion and extended public programs.

Since its establishment, the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech has remained true to its original aspiration of building a platform to support curators with innovative and critical minds while fostering a global discussion concerning our shared future. Over the years, the award program has developed into an important incubator for a great variety of cutting-edge topics, particularly the interaction of art and technology. 

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Hyundai Motorstudio

Hyundai Motorstudios are brand experience spaces that reflect the company's artistic spirit and experimental approach to art, design, and technology. This is where "motor", a word used in the automobile industry, and "studio", a word used to describe a space for contemplation and creation, meet in a manner accessible to the public. 

For more information about Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, please visit the official website of Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.  https://motorstudio.hyundai.com.cn/beijing/

About Hyundai Motor’s Art Projects

Hyundai Motor Company has been supporting art initiatives driven by long-term partnerships with global museums - the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), Tate, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) since 2013, along with major partnerships for the Korean Pavilion at the 56th, 57th, 58th, and 59th Venice Biennale and the 20th and 21st Biennale of Sydney. The newly established Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational encourages innovative ways of thinking about art and global art histories, and in partnership with global media group Bloomberg, Hyundai Motor Company connects international audiences with artists exploring the convergence of art and technology.

Visit http://artlab.hyundai.com or follow @hyundai.artlab #HyundaiArtlab to learn more about these projects.

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