Stephanie Dinkins Named Inaugural Recipient of the LG Guggenheim Award

스테파니 딘킨스 ‘비나48과의 대화'

AI(인공지능) 정보의 인종, 성, 장애, 문화적 차별 경고 

제 1회 LG구겐하임상 수상자 스테파니 딘킨스와 그의 대표작 ‘비나48과의 대화(Conversations with Bina48)'.

LG그룹이 구겐하임뮤지엄과 공동으로 기술을 기반으로 혁신적으로 작업하는 아티스트를 발굴하기 위해 제정한 구겐하임상(LG Guggenheim Award) 제 1회 수상자로 브루클린 작가 스테파니 딘킨스(Stephanie Dinkins, 59)가 선정됐다. 지난 19일 구겐하임뮤지엄에서 열린 시상식에서 딘킨스는 LG구겐하임상 트로피와 함께 상금 10만 달러를 받았다. 

스테파니 딘킨스는 인공지능(AI) 등 기술을 활용해 인종, 성(gender), 노령화(aging)과 역사를 교차하는 작업해왔다. 2014년부터 제작해온 시리즈 ‘비나48과의 대화(Conversations with Bina48)'는 중년의 흑인여성 인공지능 로봇 비나48과 딘킨스 사이에 가족, 인종차별, 종교, 지식, 고독, 로봇 친구과 로봇 시민권 등에 관한 토론 시리즈로 비나48이 여전히 백인남성의 편견에 의해 형성된다는 점을 부각시킨 작품이다. 이로써 AI 정보가 인종, 성, 장애, 문화적 배경의 다양성을 고려하지 못하고, 사회적 약자와 소수에 대한 차별과 편견을 유발할 수 있다고 경고한 작품이다. 이외에도 자신의 가족 3대에 걸친 인공지능 회고록 '유일한 사람은 아니다(Not the Only One, )', 이머시브 설치작 '비밀의 정원(Secret Garden, 2021)' 등을 제작했다.  

Stephanie Dinkins, Secret Garden, 2021. https://www.stephaniedinkins.com

딘킨스는 1964년 뉴저지주 퍼스 엠보이(Perth Amboy)에서 태어나 스태튼아일랜드에서 성장했다. 정원사였던 할머니로부터 영향을 받았으며, 뉴욕 국제사진센터(International Center of Photography)를 거쳐 메릴랜드대에서 석사학위를 받았다. 현재 뉴욕주립대(SUNY) 스토니브룩 교수로 재직 중이다. https://www.stephaniedinkins.com 

제 1회 LG구겐하임상 심사위원에는 리거시 러셀(Legacy Russell) 뉴욕 키친(The Kitchen) 디렉터 겸 수석 큐레이터, 티나 리버스 라이언(Tina Rivers Ryan) 버팔로 AKG미술관 큐레이터, 냇 트롯만( Nat Trotman) 구겐하임 퍼포먼스앤미디어 큐레이터, 시아오유 웽(Xiaoyu Weng) 독립 큐레이터, 그리고 한인 아티스트 아니카 이(Anicka Yi)가 맡았다. 

5월 19일 제 1회 LG구겐하임상 시상식에서 박설희 LG 브랜드 수석전문위원(왼쪽부터),  첫 수상자 스테파니 딘킨스, 나오미 벡위스 구겐하임 수석 큐레이터 겸 부관장. Photo: Sukie Park/NYCulureBeat

구겐하임뮤지엄은 1996년부터 휴고보스상(Hugo Boss Prize)를 시상해오고 있다. 우리 시대 가장 혁신적이고, 영향력 있는 아티스트에게 주어지는 휴고보스상은 상금 10만 달러와 구겐하임 개인전의 기회가 주어진다. 매튜 바니(1996), 피에르 휘게(2002), 욘 보(2012), 아니카 이(2016), 시몬 리(2018), 디아나 로슨(2020) 등이 수상했다. 한편, LG구겐하임상 수상작가에게는 10만 달러 상금 외에 전시 기회가 주어지는 조건은 없다.  

LG는 지난해 구겐하임뮤지엄과 글로벌 파트너쉽을 체결하고 올해부터 2027년까지 5년간 LG구겐하임상을 후원할 예정이다. 구겐하임은 최근 LG전자 부큐레이터(LG Electronics Associate Curator)로 노암 시걸(Noam Segal)을 임명했다. LG디스플레이는 뉴욕의 ‘젊은 컬렉터 위원회’(YCC, Young Collectors Council)가 매년 구겐하임에서 여는 YCC 파티를 후원하고 있다. 2023 YCC 파티는 5월 24일 오후 9시부터 자정까지 열린다. 

Stephanie Dinkins Named Inaugural Recipient of the LG Guggenheim Award

The trailblazing Brooklyn-based artist, educator, and artificial intelligence practitioner aims to create equitable social and technological ecosystems.

The Award is part of the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative, a five-year, multifaceted collaboration designed to research, honor, and promote artists working at the intersection of art and technology.

(NEW YORK, NY—May 19, 2023) The Guggenheim and LG proudly announce Stephanie Dinkins as the inaugural LG Guggenheim Award recipient. The Brooklyn-based artist, educator, and pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) practitioner, whose career spans over twenty years of artistic inquiry, is the first awardee to be recognized as part of the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative; a five-year, multifaceted collaboration designed to research, honor, and promote artists working at the intersection of art and technology. Selected by an international jury of experts in the field, Dinkins will receive an unrestricted honorarium of $100,000 in celebration of her groundbreaking achievements in technology-based art.

“Stephanie Dinkins’ artistic range, engagement with socio-cultural values, and leading artificial intelligence explorations are crucial reflections of the evolving future of technology-based art. It’s the Guggenheim’s honor to support her extraordinary work through this award,” stated Naomi Beckwith, Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Guggenheim.

“LG congratulates Stephanie Dinkins, and hopes this recognition will meaningfully advance her future endeavors,” said Seol Park, Head of Brand Management at LG Corp. “The $100,000 honorarium is accompanied by a physical award whose sculptural form represents the potential for technology to inspire new and unexpected artforms,” explained Park.

Dinkins’s participatory and immersive works aim to create equitable social and technological ecosystems through public engagement, storytelling, and a hands-on approach to technology. Her long-running experiments with AI center memory, intimacy, poetics, and playfulness as strategies to reconstruct AI models and their integrated tools—in particular natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), by which computers encode words into data for self-training, as well as deep learning (DL), which takes inspiration from neural networks to better imitate human thought processes. By anchoring her practice in small data rather than vast quantities of information, Dinkins develops reparative models for AI centered not on instrumentalization but rather on socially driven and culturally sensitive values such as care and attentiveness.

“I am grateful to LG and the Guggenheim for their support of artists who are using technology to foster positive change. I believe that art has the power to inspire and provoke, and I am committed to using my work to raise awareness of important issues and to promote social justice,” said Stephanie Dinkins.

Whether through chatbots, virtual and augmented reality, or gallery experiences, Dinkins addresses marginalized groups, such as people of color, LGBTQIA+ communities, women, and disabled people, who are excessively affected by poor code design. Her body of work advances transparent, redressable AI systems by cultivating digital literacy and online representation among these largely unprotected populations–foreshadowing the most urgent discussions about social justice and technology in the present day.

Dinkins (b. 1964, Perth Amboy, NJ) is the Yayoi Kusama Professor of Art at Stony Brook University, NY, where she founded the Future Histories Studio as part of the DISCO Network, an interacademic web incorporating social sciences and artistic approaches to promote online equity and safety for impacted communities. She holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program. Recent exhibitions include Stephanie Dinkins: On Love and Data, Stamps Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI (2021, traveled to Queens Museum of Art, NY); In Search of the Present, Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland (2021–22); FUTURES, Smithsonian Museum Arts and Industry, Washington D.C. (2021–22); Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art, Buffalo AKG Museum, NY (2022); BioMedia: The Era of Life-Like Media, ZKM|Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany (2022); and The Imitation Game, Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada (2022). She has also exhibited at De Young Museum, San Francisco (2020); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2019); and Ford Foundation Gallery, New York (2018, 2023). Her work has also been supported by the Onassis Foundation (2021); Nokia Bell Labs (2019–21); Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; Facebook (Meta) FAIR (2021–22); the Artist Fellow program of the Berggruen Institute (2020); Creative Capital (2019); Soros Equality Fellowship (2018); and many others. Dinkins lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

The jurors for the 2023 LG Guggenheim Award are Legacy Russell, Executive Director and Chief Curator, The Kitchen, New York; Tina Rivers Ryan, Curator, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; Nat Trotman, Curator, Performance and Media, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Xiaoyu Weng, independent curator and writer; and Anicka Yi, artist.

Stephanie Dinkins will be celebrated in this year’s YCC Party, presented by LG Display. The LG Guggenheim Award and the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative is made possible by LG.

Jury Statement

“We are pleased to offer the inaugural LG Guggenheim Award to artist and educator Stephanie Dinkins. Among the truly impressive group of nominees we considered, Dinkins stood out for her singular and exceptional work in the field of artificial intelligence. Dinkins’s longstanding and internationally recognized practice is deeply centered in ethics of care and social equity, exploring new models for machine learning based not in extraction but in engagement. Her inclusive and collaborative approach powerfully advocates for transparency, participation, and access around AI technologies, especially among communities at greatest risk of being abused by them. Through a range of media that includes interactive installations, sculpture, video, and web projects, as well as writing and community workshops, Dinkins steadfastly focuses on family structures, oral histories, and small data. By enacting change locally, her works claim, we can envision new technological ecosystems at a global scale.

“As artificial intelligence dominates public discourse around technology and increasingly impacts the daily lives of people all over the world, we applaud Dinkins for the urgency and optimism of her investigations. We are honored to support her groundbreaking practice through this transformational Award.”

About the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative

Founded in 2022, the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative is a five-year, multifaceted collaboration between the Guggenheim and LG designed to research, honor, and promote artists working at the intersection of art and technology. Unique in its areas of concentration and approach, the initiative is an unprecedented investment in technology as an artistic medium. It will allow the Guggenheim to broaden its investigations into this innovative field, providing essential support to the visionary artists who inspire new understandings of how technology shapes, and is shaped by, society.

The initiative is also supported by the appointment of Noam Segal as LG Electronics Associate Curator. Focusing on research, Segal holds an active role in developing the Guggenheim’s engagement with technology-based art, producing scholarship and public-facing content that will strengthen the goals of the multifaceted initiative across the museum’s departments.

About LG

LG is a technology innovator and global leader in consumer electronics, chemicals, and automotive components. Founded in 1947, LG was a driving force behind South Korea’s modernization. The company produced South Korea’s first radio and television sets, and today is a global leader in organic light-emitting displays (OLED), electric car batteries, and advanced industrial plastics. The LG group of companies employ over 280,000 people in more than 60 countries that together generate USD 150 billion in annual revenue. LG Corporation (LG Corp.) is the holding company for industry-leading LG subsidiaries, such as LG Electronics, LG Display, LG Energy Solution, LG Chem, to name a few. For more information about the LG group of companies, visit  lgcorp.com.

About the Solomon R. Guggenheim

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1937 and is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. The international constellation of museums includes the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. An architectural icon and “temple of spirit” where radical art and architecture meet, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is now among a group of eight Frank Lloyd Wright structures in the United States recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. To learn more about the museum and the Guggenheim’s activities around the world, visit guggenheim.org.

*구겐하임뮤지엄 베네수엘라 조각가 게고(GEGO) 회고전

*알렉스 카츠 구겐하임 회고전 'Alex Katz: Gathering', 2022

*추상회화의 선구자: 힐마 아프 클린트 회고전