Kim Hwang

Kim Hwang is a designer who has been working with the boundaries of applied design, advocating designs that resist the authority and restraint of a coherent techno-global system. With a focus on interdisciplinary activities, he has been examining the coarseness of repressive logic, the image of senselessness and comedy in reality. As a designer, he has been deeply disturbed by the contradictions of his own design activities oriented in self-profit and hopes to resolve the dilemma by becoming a socially engaged designer. The possibility was realised through designing Cocoon – mobile sleeping bag for the homeless, which was produced and distributed in 2005 to the homeless at Seoul Station and London. In addition, he designed CCTV Chandelier, Pyramid Light Bulb and Consumption Rationing Trading System in solidarity with designers with critical orientations. Many of his works, such as CCTV Chandelier, in which he walked through the streets wearing 360-degree CCTVs, and Pizzas for the People, in which he smuggled cooking lessons for pizza to North Korea, have been exhibited, performed and screened in a number of places including the Barbican Center in London, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and Festival B:om Seoul, as well as Japan, China, Macau, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Egypt and South Africa. Currently, Kim works as an assistant professor at the Ulsan Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST).