Monica Bonvicini

Monica Bonvicini
(Venezia, 1965)

Monica Bonvicini lives and works in Berlin, where she teaches sculpture at the Universität der Künste.

Her practice, expressed through different media such as photography, sculpture, large installations, neon and drawing, investigates the relationship between architecture, power, genre, urban space and control, and is objectified in works that question the meaning of making art, the ambiguity of language, the limits and possibilities linked to the ideal of freedom.

In her works she confronts, sometimes clashing, with the traditional vision of a modernist heritage, according to which the act of building is an essentially male prerogative.

Resorting to a harsh language, often extremely explicit, the artist investigates the close relationship that links the built space to the image of power, questioning the passive role traditionally attributed to women.

In spite of the static laws that govern the creation of spaces, ideas of destruction and instability are often present in the artist’s work, who attributes to the act of destroying the same value given to the act of building, as both actions produce a new creation.

Her research always has deep historical, social and political references and represents a conceptual challenge for the viewer, forcing him to overturn perspective and point of observation.

At Galleria Nazionale, one of Marcel Duchamp’s most famous ready-mades, the bottle rack, turns into a pop sculpture covered with bubblegum pink glass condoms, a mockery of patriarchy and the myth of man as creator and genius.

A work that speaks of unrequited love and through an extremely direct language indicates not only pain and anger but also the freedom to be able to appropriate symbols to use them in a different way.

A way to highlight the quantum leap made by women, also thanks to the American movement of MeToo, which saw them take the word and be believed. No longer objects but sentient subjects capable of constructing different narratives and landscapes.

Paola Ugolini