Gendered Creativity and Power in R.O. Kwon's Exhibit through the Lens of Art Worlds and Feminist Art Histories

Abstract

R.O. Kwon's Exhibit (2024) explores the intersections of art, gender, and identity within a globalized, image-driven culture, offering a critical examination of how contemporary women artists navigate creative autonomy, desire, and systemic inequality within the modern art world. This paper employs an interdisciplinary approach that combines Howard Becker's sociological framework of art worlds with Whitney Chadwick's feminist critique of art history to analyse how Kwon's novel portrays the structures of power that govern artistic production and reception. Through close textual analysis of the experiences of Jin Han, a Korean-American photographer, and Lidija Jung, a Korean ballerina, this paper demonstrates how gender and desire shape the creation and consumption of art. The novel dramatises the dual marginality faced by women artists who are simultaneously constrained by economic precarity and the male gaze, while seeking to reclaim their creative and bodily autonomy. This analysis situates Exhibit (2024) within current literary trends, including inter-art studies, feminist aesthetics, and representation politics, revealing how contemporary fiction serves as a site of cultural critique that exposes gendered power networks embedded within aesthetic systems.