Ayoung Kim: Many Worlds Over

Ayoung Kim’s first solo exhibition in a German museum spans over the most recent years of her artistic practice. Using artificial intelligence, virtual reality, video, game simulations, sculpture and sonic fiction, Kim creates expansive fictional universes with their own temporal and spatial laws. Her works are often linked together by speculative narratives that are still connected to the actual world that we live in. The viewers themselves are transformed into first person players, controlling the narrative from their own point of view. Her subjects are humans, mythological beings and virtual entities who cross the boundaries between different possible realities, making possible and impossible worlds collide across different times and spaces. The exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof not only enables its audiences to enter Kim’s virtual landscapes but also extends those into the museum space where visitors can lose and re-encounter themselves over and over again. This is the tenth in a series of publications accompanying solo exhibitions of contemporary artists at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. It comprises a curatorial introduction by Charlotte Knaup, an interview with Ayoung Kim by Sam Bardaouil, as well as two webtoons by the artists 1172 and cosmos. Text in English and German.