Exhibition Review: Delivery Dancer Codex is a Waste of Time

Ayoung Kim. "Delivery Dancer's Sphere," 2022. Single-channel video, 25 minutes. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Hyundai.

By COLLEEN DALUSONG November 18, 2025

Ayoung Kim: Delivery Dancer Codex marks the first time all three works from Kim’s Delivery Dancer trilogy are shown together. The first film in the trilogy, Delivery Dancer’s Sphere (2022) follows Ernst Mo as she encounters her enigmatic dopplegänger En Storm while attempting to complete tasks as a delivery driver in Seoul. In the sequel Delivery Dancer’s Arc: 0° Receiver (2024), Ernst Mo and En Storm become pawns in a futuristic multiverse, each tasked with delivering time rather than food. Finally, in Delivery Dancer’s Arc: Inverse (2024), the protagonists are placed in an alternate universe called Novaria, in which they deliver lost artifacts while attempting to outsmart the Timekeepers. What begins an intriguing commentary on the gamification of delivery apps and their reliance on exploiting low-paid workers in the gig economy soon unravels into a muddled story riddled with clichés that belong in 2010s YA dystopian novels. 

At its inaugural showcase at MoMA PS1, the video installations are accompanied by sculptural elements such as the protagonists’ phones, uniforms, and the mysterious sundial that governs their timeline. While these curatorial decisions successfully create a more immersive atmosphere, Kim herself loses the chance to make a truly incisive commentary on the current state of class and technology. As her work on the trilogy developed, Kim became too distracted with experimenting with generative AI, when she should have paid more attention to crafting a cohesive narrative.

Ayoung Kim. "Delivery Dancer's Arc: Inverse," 2024. Three-channel video, color, two-channel sound, lighting installation, random video playback and lighting synchronization control program, sundial sculptures, graphic sheets and circular screens (27 min). ACC Future Prize Commission. Courtesy the artist and ACC. 

There were instances where the use of generative AI made narrative sense, such as the introduction of the Shadow Definer, whose disruptive multiversal presence is visualized through ripples of generative AI that morphs the characters and surrounding environment into various art styles. I suspect this creative choice was influenced by the Spiderverse series, but Kim's AI-generated visual effects were laughably shoddy in comparison to the thoughtful craftsmanship made by the animators at Sony Pictures. Instead, Kim's work resembles a pedestrian TikTok of heavily filtered yet well-endowed girls dancing to that week's trending audio. Delivery Dancer's Arc: Inverse is especially egregious in its use of generative AI, featuring a ridiculous montage of "artifacts" transforming into one another with increasing speed. I couldn't help but compare the gaudily sloppy visuals of the AI-generated Novarian city in Delivery Dancer's Arc: Inverse to the CGI rendering of Seoul's winding back alleys in Delivery Dancer's Sphere. Oddly enough, Kim's artistry was more impressive in the latter, which may be considered "less advanced" in the technological sense, but is certainly more inventive in its use of filmmaking techniques and human creativity.

Ayoung Kim. "Delivery Dancer's Sphere," 2022. Single-channel video. 25 minutes. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Hyundai. 

It is incredibly ironic that a story originally inspired by the exploitation of the working class ended up being overshadowed by the utilization of a technology which not only steals from artists’ pre-existing artwork, but is also reliant on overworked and underpaid workers in countries such as Kenya and the Philippines. Moreover, the data centers which power generative AI infamously pollute the surrounding environment and consume vast amounts of drinking water. Kim’s hypocritical usage of generative AI immediately negates the Delivery Dancer trilogy’s potential to explore the relationship between art, class, and technology in our current moment.  

However, this squandered opportunity may be explained by the involvement of Hyundai Card—a company that has invested approximately $700 million USD to enhance its proprietary AI platform, ‘UNIVERSE’—which serves as a financial backer of Kim’s exhibition. In recent years, several AI companies have sought public goodwill by offering artists and art institutions financial and professional incentives to incorporate AI into their work. For instance, in an attempt to pacify complaints regarding ChatGPT and DALL-E’s consistent theft of artists’ existing works without compensation, OpenAI and Strada Gallery partnered in 2024 to give artists access to then-unreleased AI tools and grant money to create works that were exhibited in Strada Nuova: New Road at Strada Gallery in New York.

Publicity stunts such as these, carried out by greedy technocrats, have the same effect as putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg; there are still countless people who are being hurt by the continued usage and normalization of generative AI. If we are to heed the adage, “the medium is the message,” rather than using generative AI as a tool to further her own creative vision, Kim was turned into a tool to push for generative AI’s legitimization in the fine art world.

Ayoung Kim: Delivery Dancer Codex is open through March 16, 2026 at MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave, Queens, NY 11101.