The 4th Seoul Arts Awards, hosted by the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture (SFAC), was held on April 5 at the KBS Hall in Yeouido. The Seoul Arts Awards is a platform to recognize and honor outstanding works that embody both artistic excellence and contemporary relevance, selected from projects supported by SFAC and works of fine arts presented in Seoul over the past year. It serves as an annual wrap-up of artistic achievements and a stage that showcases what kinds of art are emerging in Seoul today and how artists perceive and respond to the spirit of the times.

This year’s ceremony will broadcast on television via KBS (Korean Broadcasting System). By showcasing a selection of the winning works on stage, the event was expected to promote these exceptional pieces to domestic and international audiences, as well as to stakeholders across the art world. Bringing together a diverse range of works spanning stage performances, exhibitions, and discourse, the awards provided a multi-dimensional look at the current flow of contemporary art in Seoul.

A total of 21 works (teams) have been selected as award recipients for this year’s Seoul Arts Awards. Grand Prizes, Porsche Frontier Awards, and SFAC Focus Awards were presented across six categories: Theater, Dance, Music, Traditional Arts, Visual Arts, and Multidisciplinary Arts. Additionally, a Special Award (for artists with disabilities) and a Special Achievement Award were presented. The single Grand Prix winner, chosen from among the Grand Prize recipients of the six categories, was announced live during the ceremony. Notably, the newly established SFAC Focus Award highlights the dynamism and potential of the creative ecosystem by targeting works produced without public funding. The newly introduced Special Achievement Award aims to honor artists who have made long-standing contributions to the development and expansion of the foundation of fine arts.

Theater The Grand Prize was awarded to director Seongyeol Lee’s “All My Sons.” The production was recognized for its faithful recreation of Arthur Miller’s masterpiece while connecting themes of war, capital, and human ethical responsibility to modern reality. The solid acting ensemble of veteran actors and dense, realistic direction further empowered the work. The Porsche Frontier Award went to Zaakdangmoee’s “I-scratched-my-knee;-I-feel-my-armpit-prickle,” a piece that expanded theatrical imagination through the use of the actors’ bodies and everyday objects. The SFAC Focus Award winner, Theater Company Masterpiece Cornfield’s “The Man of a Century,” was selected for showcasing the company’s sustained creative capabilities and delivering a high-quality performance despite a challenging production environment.

Dance “Leak” by Chumpan Yamoo, which received the Grand Prize, stood out as notable work. The piece earned broad acclaim for its contemporary relevance, discursive expansion, and artistic direction. As its title suggests, the work began with the everyday phenomenon of “water leaking,” but expanded this meaning to address contemporary issues such as poverty, exhaustion, and social inequality. Rather than relying on spectacular group choreography, it was praised for constructing its world through the relationships between body, objects, and space. The Porsche Frontier Award winner, Artlab_Boyeon’s “The Time Thieves,” demonstrated new choreographic possibilities by reinterpreting the traditional grammar of Korean dance in a contemporary way. The SFAC Focus Award winner, Ambiguous Dance Company’s “Body Concert,” was recognized for both its artistic merit and public appeal as a repertoire piece that has grown alongside its audience for 15 years.

Music The Grand Prize was awarded to the Richard Egarr & Camerata Antiqua Seoul. The stage was evaluated as a culmination of the ensemble’s musical history, having steadily walked the path of ancient music since before it had even established itself in the domestic music scene. The Porsche Frontier Award winner, Jungeun Park’s “Where Everyone is Identical and Everyone is Isolated,” drew attention as a new format of performance combining experimental music and performance art. The SFAC Focus Award winner went to Dongmin Lim and Hyunglok Choi’s duo recital “A New Chapter,” evaluated as a project distinguished by its meticulous composition and high level of performance execution.

Traditional Arts The Grand Prize in this category was awarded to Jaram Lee’s pansori “Snow, Snow, Snow,” a creative Pansori work that added a contemporary sensibility while remaining rooted in the traditional grammar of Pansori. The Porsche Frontier Award winner, Jonghyun Yoon’s “Myeongga Wolryun 2: Light of the Full Moon,” was praised as a stage where traditional dance, music, and direction were organically combined. The SFAC Focus Award went to Pansori Factory Badaksori’s Pansori Theatre “Crime and Punishment,” a work that demonstrated the potential for expanding traditional arts by reconstructing classical literature into a Pansori-based theater.

Visual Arts The Grand Prize winner, Oksun Kim’s Oksun Hyerim Insun, illuminated the issues of women, migration, and social structures from multiple perspectives through the lives of three women. By combining photography with text, video, and installation, it showed the process of personal narratives expanding into social memory. The Porsche Frontier Award winner, Seeun Kim’s solo exhibition Pit Calls Wall, explored the expansive possibilities of the medium by combining installation and space centered around painting. The SFAC Focus Award recognized Forking Room’s Forking Room2025 Left Tech as a notable research-based project combining research, discussion, and exhibition.

Multidisciplinary Arts The Grand Prize was awarded to the Seoul Express’s When poverty, despair, and struggle were all that remained, there was a song. The project collected resistance music from around the world and reconstructed it as a performance, prompting new reflection on the relationship between art and society. The Porsche Frontier Award winner, Minjae Lee’s solo exhibition Doppel-Lumpen, showed strong performativity through the work by combining performance, installation, and video. The SFAC Focus Award winner, Hyunjin Jo and Jimin Ha’s “Night Beast Troop,” was an experimental project that reconstructed historical and gender narratives with a contemporary sensibility.

Special Award (for artists with disabilities) This special award went to choreographer Yongwoo Kim. As a first-generation wheelchair dancer in Korea, he has built a unique artistic world by expanding the wheelchair into a creative language. At the same time, he has contributed to widening the foundation of the disability arts ecosystem through networks and festivals for artists with disabilities.

Special Achievement Award Actress Jungja Park was selected as the recipient. Since her debut on the theatrical stage in the early 1960s, she has been active at the center of Korean theater for over 60 years. Through countless works, she has delivered profound performances and helped write important chapters in the history of Korean theater. The Special Achievement Award honored her long-standing artistic dedication to the stage and her contributions to the development of Korean fine arts.

The 4th Seoul Arts Awards demonstrates the questions and sensibilities through which contemporary art views our era. Although the works vary in genre and format, they share a common significance in that they all interpret the reality we live in through their own unique languages. Through these works, the Seoul Arts Awards has established itself as a platform to survey the present state of Seoul’s arts and to look forward to the next scene of creation.

SFAC plans to provide various opportunities for the works selected through these awards to reach and spread among more domestic and international audiences. We hope that works born in Seoul will continue onto larger stages, creating new trends in contemporary Korean fine arts and serving as a starting point for “K-Fine Arts” to meet the world.