Seoul-based artist group Yagwang has won the 2026 Frieze Seoul Artist Award, becoming the first collective to receive the accolade. Supported by Bvlgari for the fourth consecutive year, the award recognizes midcareer Korean artists and invites them to create an original work for Frieze Seoul, which returns to COEX on September 2. 

Yagwang was selected by a jury comprising Frieze Seoul director Patrick Lee, SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation artistic director Laurencina Farrant-Lee, Ilmin Museum of Art chief curator Juli Yoon, independent curator Jeyun Moon, and Frieze House Seoul director Andy St. Louis. Previous winners of the award include Im Youngzoo (2025), Goen Choi (2024), and Hannah Woo (2023).

Founded by Terri Kim and In Jeon in 2021, Yagwang engages themes of human rights, gender, and queerness through sculptures, videos, installations, and performances that subvert traditional definitions of identity. The collective held its first solo exhibition at Seoul’s Windmill art space in 2022, “Lubricant,” which combined projection and performance to reconstruct queer memories through materials including latex, chains, and vinyl. Recent group exhibitions in Korea include “Cosmo Asia People” at the National Asian Culture Center and “Spectrosynthesis Seoul” at Art Sonje Center, both in 2026, as well as “off-site 2: Eleven Episodes” at Kukje Gallery in 2025.

In September, the collective will present Facade Zone (2026), a sculptural installation that features a reconstructed fair stand crafted in wood, evoking the bare, unfinished backstage structures of film sets and photoshoots that do not appear on camera. Buddhist-inspired iconographic guardian figures made of latex will inhabit the armature, while strategically placed lights will shine through the materials and cast moving shadows across the framework, animating the piece for passersby. 

“Yagwang is a collective I have admired for some time, from its Frieze LIVE performances last year to this ambitious new commission for the fair,” noted Lee in a press release. “Their work tackles gender, the body, and labor with rigor and ambition, and we are proud to present it to a global audience.”

Emmanuelle Richter is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.