Being a Queen, Kyungwoo Chun

Title: Being a Queen

Artist: Kyungwoo Chun

Text: Louise Wolthers, Rune Gade, and Natalie Boseul Shin

Dimensions: 21 x 24,5 cm

Pages: 64

Year: 2009

Type: Hardcover book

Publisher: Hanmi Foundation of Arts and Culture

The starting point for "Being a Queen" is the way in which Danes reflect themselves in the persona of Queen Margrethe. The project is a tribute to Her Majesty and the role she plays in the imaginary of the Danish population. The importance of the Queen to the self-understanding of the Danish people is thematised by Kyungwoo Chun by the use of staged portraits and video interviews with Danish men and women. All the participants consider themselves to possess either a physical or a mental similarity to Her Majesty Queen Margrethe. Portraiture, plainly, plays a key role in the project: the subjects have been individually photographed wearing a copy of a dress worn by Queen Margrethe. The exposure time of these portraits varies according to the age of the subjects. By such means, Kyungwoo Chun creates fascinating and intense portraits which also reflect upon the history of photography as a medium. Taken as a whole, they demonstrate Chun's special interest in how the photographic process - on both a technical and a conceptual level - seems to be able to capture, and reproduce, absence. 

Kyungwoo Chun searches for the Queen in each individual, yet finds the individual in every Queen.

This catalogue was published in connection with the exhibition of the same name at Galleri Image.