Questioning Memory
Christina Yang, curator
What excites me about this body of work is how it connects Sowon Kwon’s ongoing investigation of the body and subjectivity to her newest thinking about how electronic media shapes the space of memory. Whether recollecting Surrealist graphic novels, performance videos from the 1970s, or Olympic feats of excellence, Kwon adds a subtle layer of her own artistic questioning onto moments of cultural and art historical resonance. Shifting in speed, executing mundane as well as extraordinary movements, Sowon Kwon’s ghostly yet precise imagery sustains a sense of the live even as the weight of bodies has disappeared. Against a backdrop of continuous change (obsolescence), this exhibition asks how we might translate a time when mass spectatorship and radical action converged, into possible significance for audiences today. Can memories give life to the present? What constitutes "something new?"
