Sowon Kwon
b. 1963, Seoul, Korea
af (First Perfect), 2001
Color lithograph
Edition of 30
Courtesy the artist

Among various strands of inquiry, Sowon Kwon creates drawings, prints, sculptural reliefs, and video installations that examine ideas of perfection, beauty, standardization, and the gendered inscription of bodies. Her work af (First Perfect) is a large-scale projection that superimposes the outlines traced from an ergonomic template codifying the “average female” onto the body of Nadia Comăneci, the Romanian gymnast who achieved a first perfect score at the Montreal Olympics in 1976.