Hyundai
Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025: Prayers to Fornax: Science, Technology, and Spirituality
Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025: Prayers to Fornax: Science, Technology, and Spirituality
Hyundai
About the Exhibition
The first exhibition of Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025, Prayers to Fornax: Science, Technology, and Spirituality, invites audiences to practice a ritual of bridging the realms of rationality and spirituality. Structured around the interconnected themes of “Measuring the Unmeasurable,” “Othered Knowledge,” and “Looking for a Sign,” the exhibition explores how rational inquiry, technological systems, and spiritual imagination might together offer new ways of thinking about technology.
Fornax, meaning “laboratory stove” or “furnace,” is a constellation in the southern hemisphere named by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1756, and in the exhibition, it sits at the intersection of rational inquiry and esoteric belief. The exhibition presents a multifaceted exploration: searching for meaning that lies beyond the reach of science through June Balthazard and Pierre Pauze’s Mass (2020) and Chen Zhe’s Celestial-cranial Instrument series (2022-2023); uncovering the knowledge buried in the land through Natasha Tontey’s Of Other Tomorrows Never Known (2023) and Riar Rizaldi’s Tellurian Drama (2020); and searching the cosmos for signs through Zach Blas’s Metric Mysticism: A Troll’s Tale (2022), Nolan Oswald Dennis’s Black Liberation Zodiac: Whale-mouth Solidarities (2026), Haroon Mirza’s Cymatic Ceremony (2024), and Suzanne Treister’s HEXEN 5.0 (2025), and asks whether the knowledge found in shamanism, folklore, Indigenous cosmologies, and mysticism could offer us new insights, opening onto a broader constellation of understanding the world we inhabit.
Curated by Yifeng Wei & Penny Dan Xu, one of the two final awardee collectives of Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025, the exhibition invites audiences to consider the relationship between scientific inquiry and spiritual imagination through images, installations, videos, and sculptures: “We are thrilled to present this exhibition, which invites audiences into a transformative experience that bridges different forms of knowledge,” the curators said. “Moving between science and spirituality, the exhibition searches for futures that no single worldview can see alone.”
Participating Artists
June Balthazard and Pierre Pauze
Zach Blas
Nolan Oswald Dennis
Haroon Mirza
Riar Rizaldi
Natasha Tontey
Suzanne Treister
Chen Zhe
About the Curator
Yifeng Wei is a curator, researcher, and PhD candidate in Visual Culture at the National College of Art and Design, Ireland. His research engages with the aesthetics of opacity as a critical framework for resistance against digital colonization and technological oppression. His curatorial and publishing projects—often involving critical writing and performative lectures—have been presented internationally at the NCAD Gallery (Ireland), The LAB Gallery (Ireland), LUX Pavilion (Germany), Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania), the University of Cambridge (UK), and Arizona State University (USA).
Dr. Penny Dan Xu is a London-based independent curator with 13 years of experience. She holds a PhD in Art History and is the founder of Across Platform, a not-for-profit research initiative. She also serves as an advisor to the art organization Baopu FELT. Her work focuses on collaborative research in the contemporary art field and beyond, with a commitment to slow thinking, cross-cultural dialogue, and independent knowledge production.
About the Program
Hyundai Blue Prize+
The Hyundai Blue Prize+ is an open call program, inviting emerging curators worldwide to explore the most pressing contemporary issues, in connection with the contexts of Asia, by pursuing boundless perspectives. Initiated in 2017 by Hyundai Motor, Hyundai Blue Prize has previously supported emerging curators through Hyundai Blue Prize Art + Tech in China and Hyundai Blue Prize Design in Korea. In 2025, the initiative has evolved into Hyundai Blue Prize+, expanding its scope to transcend boundaries, cultivate interdisciplinary research, and foster transcultural conversations.
