New Suns: Mobility

New Suns is a space for imagining and experimenting with a multilayered worldview where diverse thoughts, experiences, and identities intersect. The three-year project grew from a shared desire to rethink contemporary art and art education system within the context of South Korea. Local practitioners experience challenges to find spaces for experimentation and networking within the existing academia and institutions. In response, the New Suns seeks to create a space for art-making grounded in conviviality and interdependent relationships of mutual support and collective learning.

We, the organizing team behind New Suns and the participants, are engaging in collaborative and emergent practices rooted in artistic research. Our approach honors process over product, aiming to move beyond the social norms embedded in disciplinary boundaries, academic structures, and market-driven expectations. We believe that art can serve as a catalyst for change and communities can ignite the creative process by nurturing practices that are both aesthetically experimental and socially engaged. This perspective draws inspiration from a quote attributed to Octavia E. Butler “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns” which is known to appear as an epigram for her never-published work Parable of the Trickster.  

For the next three years, New Suns will explore different themes and expand our community participation. This year’s theme Mobility is inspired by various ways movement shapes reality; the physical movement of migrants and refugees, non-human mobilities across ecological and technological systems, the right to access for people with disabilities, transformation of social understanding of gender and identity, and the flows of data and capital. The program consists of lectures and workshops with guests including Min Hyoung Song, Young-Ah Park, Achim Koh, Hwan Kim, and Hantol.

New Suns: Mobility includes 10 participants from various regions in South Korea selected through an open call: 109, Soorim Bae, Kwonkeum Ko, Yupil Ko, Yeonjoo Cho, Jihyeon Han, Rahm Kim, Yeji Oh, Eun U, and Hyobeom Bak—an intergenerational and eclectic group whose varied practices and backgrounds embody the multiple dimensions of mobility. Participants each led Open Studios featuring their works-in-progress, workshops and performances, and the related documentation were presented as part of Open Archive, an evolving exhibition set to unfold the journey of 2025, highlighting process, experimentation, and exchange.

New Suns: Mobility is organized by artist Taeyoon Choi with curator Gahee Park and project manager Jaea Kim, Hyesu Jeon. The project is collaboratively realized with art director Jaiwon Choi, graphic designer Hyunki Park, 3D designer Jae Kim, space designer Beomjun Kim, Boram Kim, web designer Yeonwoo Kim and videographer Hyejin Jang.

New Suns is supported by Art Council Korea.