Exterior of Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing. Photo © Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.
The Artlab Editors reflect on the distinctive power of the open call in creating a more actively inclusive and representative cultural landscape, as demonstrated by initiatives like Hyundai Blue Prize+, VH AWARD, PROJECT HASHTAG, and the Artlab Editorial Fellowship.
The adage that success in any industry is contingent on “who you know” bears particular weight in the world of contemporary art—knowing the “right” curators, writers, artists, gallerists, etc. While we all function within these networks of knowledge (these relationships are, after all, the webs that form communities), how do we break out of these concentric circles of who (and what) we know?
The open call functions as an essential way to disrupt these gatekept networks, remaining one of the few tools in the art world designed to ask: Who else is out there? In an era where cultural platforms are recalibrating for greater inclusion, open calls are a commitment toward transparency over insider networks.
As part of Hyundai Artlab’s mission to expand access and elevate new voices, our open calls democratize opportunity, catalyze experimentation, and foster new forms of cultural storytelling across borders. Through initiatives like Hyundai Blue Prize+, Artlab Editorial Fellowship, VH AWARD, and PROJECT HASHTAG, we are helping to shape a more porous, pluralistic future for art.
Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025 Open Call © Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.
Established as a laboratory for the evolving role of curators, since 2017, Hyundai Motor has supported emerging curators through Hyundai Blue Prize Art + Tech in China and Hyundai Blue Prize Design in Korea. In 2025, the initiative evolved into Hyundai Blue Prize+, expanding the program’s scope to transcend boundaries, cultivate interdisciplinary research, and foster transcultural conversations by inviting applicants engaged with the context of Asia from around the world to explore the most pressing contemporary issues.
Following the open call, five curators or curatorial collectives will be selected as shortlisted finalists and will each receive one-on-one mentorship with the members of the jury panel, a research tour in China, and a $4,000 grant to develop a final exhibition proposal. Two final awardees from this shortlist will present their exhibition at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing with up to 800,000 RMB (approximately $110,000) for exhibition production and implementation, making the Hyundai Blue Prize+ a rare opportunity for emerging curators to curate an entire exhibition independently.
Applications for the Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025 closed on June 8, 2025; stay tuned for this year’s finalists, to be announced in July!
Meanwhile, for nearly a decade, Hyundai Motor Group has been supporting emerging new media artists working within the context of Asia through their biennial VH AWARD open call. Initiated in 2016, the award provides five finalists an online residency program as well as exhibitions of commissioned artworks across various global platforms.
Artworks commissioned by the VH AWARD have been exhibited in partnership with various art institutions and platforms, including the Vision Hall of Hyundai Motor Group in Yongin, South Korea; the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria; the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara in Jakarta, Indonesia; the National Arts Council in Singapore; the House of Electronic Arts in Basel, Switzerland; and the Elektra Virtual Museum.
The finalists of the 6th VH AWARD recently spoke to Dawn Chan, writer and leading scholar of Asian Futurisms, about their commissions. Read part one and part two here.
Open calls also offer great potentials for innovative collaborations. The first and only open call program hosted by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul (MMCA), since 2019, PROJECT HASHTAG PROJECT HASHTAG has invited creative teams in Korea from a diversity of fields to engage in interdisciplinary collaborations that redefine artistic expression. Developed in partnership with Hyundai Motor, PROJECT HASHTAG grants two teams annually to produce a project using the MMCA’s Changdong studio space. These works will then be showcased at MMCA Seoul, providing a rare opportunity for emerging creators to present their work in one of Korea’s most prestigious contemporary art institutions.
Now in its fifth iteration, PROJECT HASHTAG remains a dynamic space for creative exploration and dialogue. Reflecting the fluid and open nature of the hashtag symbol (#), the initiative seeks to foster experimental and cross-disciplinary projects between artists, producers, and researchers across diverse fields and disciplines including painting, sculpture, new media, film, design, architecture, music, dance, linguistics, biology, physics, poetry, fiction, and hypertext.
As the demand for these artist and curatorial opportunities became apparent, so too did the need for substantial support for the art writers who create the critical discourse that allows culture to thrive. Since 2022, the Artlab Editorial Fellowship Open Call has become a rare opportunity for art writers from any corner of the world and at any stage of their career to receive $10,000 to write three essays for Artlab Editorial and receive one-on-one mentorship from annually selected advisors.
Dena Springer, Cosmic Intersections, 2025.
Commissioned by Hyundai Artlab, © Dena Springer.
In the three years since its inception, the Artlab Editorial Fellowship has received over a thousand applications from some of the most incisive voices in culture. This year’s open call saw an overwhelming response, attracting nearly 500 exceptional applicants from over 60 countries and 200 cities around the world. From essays on the impact of imagemaking in Kashmir, to the developing cultural community in Miami, to the slipperiness of defining a Nigerian diasporic aesthetic, to Indigenous cosmologies, year after year, the writers selected for the Artlab Editorial Fellowship offer critical insights from geographies and perspectives that are often underrepresented in the global cultural discourse. The nature of the open call is key to ensuring these voices are heard.
Read our roundtable conversation between this year’s Fellows, Jiaying Sim and Elvia Wilk, and their respective advisors, Rahel Aima and Orit Gat to learn more about their work and what they plan to explore during the course of their fellowship. And read the first of this year’s Fellowship essays, Softness as Method: Charmaine Poh’s Cinematic Language for Queer Parenthood in Singapore by Sim.
At Hyundai Artlab, we believe that access is agency. Each open call is not only an opportunity—it’s an invitation to participate in a global conversation. By bridging Seoul to Miami, Jakarta to Medellin, and online to IRL, these programs reflect the hybrid, decentralized ecosystem Artlab continues to nurture. In a time of cultural contraction and institutional precarity, open calls signal commitment to a future constantly taking shape.
