Enter the draw
On 'The Princess Series'
Kukwon Woo’s The Princess series reimagines familiar princesses, disrupting their idealised, carefully constructed images with spontaneous, childlike drawings originally made by his daughter. As a final touch to each work, Kukwon recreates elements of her drawings over the painted figures himself. These instinctive, unrefined marks contrast with the polished imagery of the princesses.
One phrase appears throughout the series - “Once upon a time the princess said 'fuck this shit' and lived happily ever after” - twists the familiar language of fairy tales. Rather than waiting for the conventional happy ending written for her, the princess rejects the role and narrative imposed upon her and chooses her own ending.
This idea is further developed through the presence of Machiavelli’s The Prince, which appears as a book depicted within the paintings themselves. The deliberate juxtaposition of The Princess and The Prince opens the series to a broader reading beyond the familiar imagery of fairy-tale heroines. It introduces questions of prescribed roles, power, individual agency, and the tension between identities that are given to us and those we choose for ourselves.
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