Jungoe Academic Welfare Foundation Holds '2023 JW Art Awards' Ceremony

The Jungwoo Academic Welfare Foundation, a public interest foundation of JW Group, announced on the 23rd that it held the ‘2023 JW Art Awards’ ceremony on the 22nd at the JW Gwacheon Building located in Gwacheon-si, Gyeonggi-do.

Artist Jeong Young-eun, the grand prize winner of the '2023 JW Art Awards,' is posing for a commemorative photo in front of the award-winning work 'Life is Beautiful 2.'
[Photo by Jungoe Academic Welfare Foundation]

Now in its 9th year, the JW Art Awards is an art contest hosted by the Jungwoo Academic Welfare Foundation and sponsored by JW Group, designed to provide opportunities for creative activities to artists with disabilities. The prize money is the highest among domestic art exhibitions for people with disabilities, having produced a total of 1,555 works and 287 award-winning artists over the past eight years.

This year’s contest accepted submissions of artworks from artists with disabilities aged 16 and older for about two months from July 3 to August 30, receiving a total of 212 artworks.

At this year’s awards ceremony, the Jungwoo Academic Welfare Foundation selected one Grand Prize winner (5 million KRW), two Excellence Award winners (3 million KRW each), two Merit Award winners (2 million KRW each), two Encouragement Award winners (1 million KRW each), and 20 Honorable Mentions (300,000 KRW each), awarding a total of 23 million KRW in prize money.

The Grand Prize was awarded to artist Jeong Young-eun for the work titled ‘Life is Beautiful 2.’ The piece depicts clothes and toy dolls handmade by the artist’s mother during her childhood in soft and warm colors, expressing the meaning of love and happiness remembered by the artist. The Excellence Awards went to artists Geum Chae-min and Park Kyung-mook; the Merit Awards to Kim Kyung-sook and Choi Ha-eun; the Encouragement Awards to Park Sung-yeon and Jeong Dong-hwan; along with 20 Honorable Mention recipients who were also announced.

The 27 award-winning works selected in this contest will be exhibited until the 24th on the first floor JW Hall of the JW Gwacheon Building. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

A representative of the Jungwoo Academic Welfare Foundation said, “The participation and interest of talented artists with disabilities are increasing,” adding, “We will continue to develop the JW Art Awards as a gateway to discover artists with disabilities who will illuminate the Korean art world in the future.”