“Art Made of Sound: Kim Young-eun’s Work Finally Recognized”
Creatrip Team
2 months ago
Kim Young-eun, a 46-year-old artist who treats sound as her primary material, won the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s ‘2025 Artist of the Year’ award. Trained originally in sculpture but drawn to music (she once considered attending music school), Kim has for two decades used recorded songs, street sounds, archival texts and interviews to explore how sound reflects social and political histories—such as Imperial Japan’s hearing training and Cold War curfew sirens. Many of her exhibition works present text extracts from archival sources rather than literal audio, aiming to summon forgotten sounds. Her projects also address diaspora, feminism and disability: for example, a work revoices immigrant interviews in intentionally non-native English, and another reimagines recorded male immigrant voices as a female choir; a piece includes the Paralympic sport goalball (a ball with bells) to highlight sound-centered play. Judges praised her “sound ethnography” approach and nuanced treatment of power and listening. (goalball: a Paralympic sport using a ball with bells to enable visually impaired players to track it)
