Co-Winners of the Media Art Award
Honorary Prize Newly Established This Year
10 Million Won Prize for Each Winner
The Seoul Museum of Art announced on September 8 that Hiwa K and Anucha Suwichakornpong have been selected as co-winners of the 2025 SeMA-Hana Media Art Award. This year, the newly established Honorary Prize was awarded to Ernest A. Bryant III. The award ceremony was held on August 28 at SeMA Hall in the Seosomun Main Building of the Seoul Museum of Art, where each of the three winners received a prize of 10 million won and a ceramic trophy.
2025 SeMA-Hana Media Art Award Winners (from left) Hiwa K, Anucha Suwichakornpong, Ernest A. Bryant III. Seoul Museum of Art
The SeMA-Hana Media Art Award was established in 2014 with the sponsorship of Hana Financial Group to raise the profile of contemporary art in Korean society and broaden its audience. The award is presented to one or more artists who demonstrate artistic vision and contribution, selected through a review by domestic and international expert judges among the artists and works invited to the Seoul Mediacity Biennale.
Now in its sixth edition, the 2025 SeMA-Hana Media Art Award was judged by a panel chaired by Mika Kuraya, Director of the Yokohama Museum of Art, and included Elena Vogman, comparative literature and media scholar; Kwak Youngbin, art media scholar; the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale artistic director team Anton Vidokle, Harley Ayers, Lukas Brasiskis; and Choi Eunju, Director of the Seoul Museum of Art.
Hiwa K: Focusing on Contradictions and Losses in the Medical System Based on Personal Experience
Co-winner Hiwa K is an artist who migrated from Kurdistan in northern Iraq to Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Through various media such as sculpture, video, and performance, he has presented works that narrate alternative histories and question the narratives of power, utilizing personal experiences and oral forms.
Hiwa K's commissioned work for the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, "You Will Not Feel Anything" (2025), is a 12-minute single-channel video. It recounts an episode in which the artist, experiencing pain below his waist, visits a hospital but ultimately seeks out a local traditional healer instead of undergoing surgery. The artist highlights the reality in which indigenous knowledge and traditional medicine are marginalized due to the corporate profit logic of Western medicine, raising awareness of these issues.
The jury noted that this work does not observe another person's illness from an external perspective, but rather starts from the contradictions and losses within the medical system that the artist personally experienced.
Anucha Suwichakornpong: Addressing the Bangkok Military Massacre of Pro-Democracy Protesters
Co-winner Anucha Suwichakornpong is a filmmaker who mainly deals with events and narratives inspired by Thai society. He has continued to support Southeast Asian cinema, including co-founding the production company Electric Eel Films with other Thai writers and filmmakers.
His commissioned work for the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, "Narrative" (2025), documents a rehearsal for a film about a fictional trial concerning the 2010 massacre of pro-democracy protesters and civilians by the military in Bangkok. Filmed on the 15th anniversary of the event, the work interweaves scenes from the making of the feature film with witness testimonies, against the backdrop of the Thai government's ongoing refusal to allow citizen-participatory trials to investigate the historical truth.
The jury highlighted that the work, through the power of moving images, naturally reveals the trauma and subconscious sensations related to the unresolved massacre by the Thai government, even after many years have passed. They cited the way it reaffirms the importance of cinema as a medium as a key reason for the award.
Honorary Prize Newly Established This Year... Shedding Light on the Role of Art Across Cultures
The newly established Honorary Prize this year was awarded to Ernest A. Bryant III, an artist and critic working in interdisciplinary art.
Bryant has continuously explored the roles that art and artworks play across diverse cultures, the relationships and interpretative possibilities generated by the "gaze" exchanged between artworks and viewers, and the influence produced in the relationships among images, objects, rituals, and society. His biennale entry, "Self-Healing" (2025), is an interactive sculpture based on the Nkisi sculptural style of early 20th-century Central Africa (Congo), and forms an intriguing encounter with "TV Buddha" (Nam June Paik, 1989), which is also presented in the exhibition.
Jury chair Mika Kuraya stated, "This year, the jury placed significant emphasis on how the works expressed the social and political dimensions of the curatorial theme, as well as their complex relationships with capitalism and advanced technology," adding, "With a large number of video works submitted, maintaining a balanced evaluation without favoring any particular medium was also an important criterion."
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