At MoMA PS1, Ayoung Kim: Delivery Dancer Codex presents the US debut of the artist’s celebrated Delivery Dancer trilogy, shown together for the first time.
Delivery Dancer Codex transforms MoMA PS1’s third floor into an expanded, cinematic environment where three major video installations from Kim’s Delivery Dancer trilogy are shown alongside new sculptural and installation elements. Recognised as being on the vanguard of digital innovation, Kim combines generative AI, game‑engine simulation and filmed performance to construct narrative worlds in which two delivery riders—En Storm and Ernst Mo (their names anagrams of “monster”)—navigate Seoul and other hybrid terrains as both workers and mythic messengers.
Described by the artist as “pandemic fiction,” these works take the surge in app‑based delivery during Covid‑19 as a starting point to examine how data infrastructures choreograph bodies and time. The trilogy stages the gig economy as a choreography of survival and exhaustion driven by algorithmic dispatch and 24/7 availability, while also opening speculative zones where labour, queerness, technology and environment entangle. Across videos, sculptural props such as helmets and sundials, and mirrored architectures, the exhibition probes evolving relations between data, human beings and their environments, challenging the pressures of self‑optimisation and the logics of platform capitalism.
