Artnet News spotlights five trailblazing performance artists defining 2025, including Geumhyung Jeong, whose work "Toys, Selected" (2025) at Canal Projects in New York explores the uncanny relationship between humans and robots through intimate, choreographed interactions with machine parts she built herself. Jeong, who studied acting, dance, and film animation in South Korea, has performed at Kunsthalle Basel, the 2022 Venice Biennale, and London's ICA, and is currently unrepresented by a gallery. The article also profiles Maja Malou Lyse, who was tapped to represent her country at the Venice Biennale.
The series matters because it identifies emerging artists who are shaping contemporary culture, with performance art increasingly addressing urgent themes like automation, artificial intelligence, and human-machine codependency. By highlighting artists like Jeong, who probes whether humans control machines or vice versa, the article underscores how performance art is evolving to engage with technological realities, making it a critical lens for understanding our automated future.