The Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) has appointed Irini Papadimitriou as Artistic Director of the 14th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, scheduled to open in August 2027. Currently serving as Director of Exhibitions at Diriyah Art Futures in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Papadimitriou is a curator whose practice critically examines the relationships between art, technology, and society. Her previous roles include positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and FutureEverything in the United Kingdom.
Originally launched with the exhibition SEOUL in MEDIA in 1996, the Seoul Mediacity Biennale has established itself over the past 30 years as one of Seoul’s leading international art events. Grounded in the distinctive urban context of Seoul and its rapidly changing media environment, the Biennale has moved beyond a purely technological understanding of media to examine the social and cultural conditions surrounding it, presenting diverse artistic practices and discourses in contemporary art.
The appointment was made through the Biennale’s third international open call for an Artistic Director. A jury of art professionals from Korea and abroad reviewed 70 proposals through an initial application review, followed by a second round of interviews. The jury ultimately selected Papadimitriou’s proposal for its critical engagement with the relationships between technology, power, and the future, as well as its potential to explore these questions within Seoul’s cultural and geopolitical context, while extending artistic imagination into social, political, and ethical dimensions.
The 14th Seoul Mediacity Biennale aims to create a space for fundamental reflection on the values and purposes that scientific and technological progress and innovation ultimately serve. To this end, the Biennale will critically revisit the technologies and technological environments shaped by the logics of domination and control, seeking to reveal their underlying structures. Following the theme “Machines of Repair,” the Biennale will explore an artistic imagination that poses new questions about the relationships between technology, power, and the future through a range of artworks and public programs.
This critical inquiry begins by examining how technological systems have become entangled with structures of power, conflict, and injustice, and how they have been historically aligned with systems of destruction and domination. In particular, the Biennale draws attention to the ways in which the technological ingenuity that has expanded communication, navigation, medicine, and knowledge has also transformed warfare, accelerated resource extraction and intensified surveillance, and reconfigured infrastructures of domination and control. Artificial intelligence will be presented as one of the most visible contemporary examples of this dual nature of technology.
Choi Eunju, General Director of the Seoul Museum of Art, remarked, “With the appointment of the new Artistic Director, we hope the Seoul Mediacity Biennale will expand its artistic inquiry into the major issues facing contemporary society, and further establish itself as a platform connecting diverse cultural perspectives and practices. We also hope the 14th edition will offer an opportunity to reimagine the future of technology through art and extend these possibilities into the realities of everyday life.”
Irini Papadimitriou, Artistic Director of the 14th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, stated, “I am incredibly grateful and honoured to be appointed as Artistic Director.” She added, “At a time when technological innovation is too often driven by conquest, extraction, surveillance, and control, I look forward to building on the Seoul Mediacity Biennale’s legacy of bringing art and emerging technologies into critical dialogue. The 14th Biennale will critically examine how these systems shape our societies and futures. Beyond exposing these realities, my vision is to open up a space for collective imagination and dialogue, asking how technology might be reoriented towards infrastructures of the public good.”
Further details about the 14th Seoul Mediacity Biennale’s upcoming pre-Biennale program will be announced on the official website in November.
Photo: Courtesy of the Seoul Museum of Art