THE PERFECT WOMAN IS A LIE (2006, 2023)

The Perfect Woman is a Lie I + II, self-portrait, 2006/ 2023, mediums and sizes vary

Seventeen years and several thousand air miles separate the two photographs, taken in Shanghai in 2006 and in Paris in 2023 respectively. The Korean video artist Nam Jun Paik once proclaimed: „When too perfect, lieber Gott böse“, reminding us that perfection is not the measure of all things. And yet it is always being demanded while women bodies are the battleground on which these demands are made, be it in fashion or on social media. A woman can never be enough. My image of the (im)perfect woman has maintained her pose over the years: like a victim of war with crutches instead of arms, she stands on the tip of her toes, precarious in her balance. This is how the First World War invalids by Otto Dix and George Grosz could have stood. Or the dada artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp who, in 1917, danced as Living Abstraction with similar tubular arms looking like a grotesque doll from Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Ballet. My questioning of the contradiction between the desire for beauty and the forcible demand thereof is rooted in an aesthetic of the absurd. The contradiction cannot be resolved, but it can be transformed into powerful images.

The Perfect Woman Is no Lie #1, #2, #3, #4, self-portait, 2006, Diasec, 40 × 60 cm

© SusanneJunker 2026