Selected for the 2025 Lower Saxony Media Art (formerly Edith-Russ-Haus) Grant

The new project The Holy City has been selected as a production support work for the 2025 Lower Saxony Media Art Grant (formerly Edith-Russ-Haus Media Art), the Stiftung Niedersachsen Media Art Grants at the Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg.

The Lower Saxony Media Art Grant supports a wide range of media art every year, from video art and internet-based projects to audio works and audiovisual installations. The three selected artists will present their exhibitions in 2026 at the Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg in Germany.

Jury Statement:

“The Korean filmmaker, Kwang-Ju Son: The Holy City is an ambitious filmic project that offers an unexpected portrayal of organised Christianity in the modern state of Korea. “Korean Christianity, an imported faith, has historically navigated tensions with colonialism, division, and modernization. The project examines this `otherness,‘ particularly how the cross, embodying Korea’s modern history, is perceived and transformed”, says the artist in the application. While exploring Christianity’s political and economic alignments in South Korea in a historical context and its current social embeddedness, or the lack thereof, the filmic project positions the cross as a cultural and historical artifact that reflects the transformations and distortions of modernity. Son will examine religion’s impact as a driver of both social ideological cohesion on one hand and, conversely, social repression on the other. We find this robust choice of subject matter and her intelligent and ambitious form of filmmaking very exciting at this time.”

2025 Jury:
Nikolett Eross (OFF-Biennial Budapest), Annie Fletcher (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Edit Molnár (HAUS), Marcel Schwierin (HAUS).

For more information:
- https:/www.hausmedienkunst.de/en/about/grants
- The Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg