Monika Weiss
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Monika Weiss | |
|---|---|
 Weiss in Speaking Portraits | |
| Born | 1964 (age 61–62) |
| Known for | Installation, Video, Performance |
| Website | www |
Monika Weiss (born 1964, in Warsaw) is a Polish-American contemporary artist based in New York City. She works primarily with Installation, video projection, performance, sound and drawing.[1][2] Her transdisciplinary approach investigates relationships between body and history, and evokes ancient rituals of lamentation.[3][4]
Weiss, the daughter of a concert pianist, studied piano and classical music from 1970-1984.[1][5] She attended The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1984-1989, where she studied painting and drawing under Ryszard Winiarski, Stefan Gierowski and Marian Czapla. She was an Artist in Residence at The Academy of Fine Arts In Łódź (1994-1995), Spelman College in Atlanta (1996), the Georgia State University School of Art and Design (1997-1998), The University of Maryland (1999) and at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (2002).[1]
Career
Weiss's early works from the 1980s and early 90s consisted mostly of drawings and paintings of human figures. The drawings were made with ink mixed with paint and she often built collages on large sheets of paper from them. Later the artist's work expanded to include installations, video and sound projects.[1]
Her work has been exhibited in over twenty solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions internationally.[1][6] In 2005, Lehman College Art Gallery organized and published a retrospective of the artist's work since 1999, Monika Weiss: Five Rivers.[1][6][7] In 2006, Weiss was commissioned to create Drawing Lethe at the World Financial Center, a large scale public project curated by the Drawing Center in New York.[1][4][8] Her work has been featured at Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation CIFO, Miami (Forms of Classification: Alternative Knowledge and Contemporary Art, 2007; The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, 2009),[9][10] and she was part of Prague's Muzeum Montanelli (MuMo)’s inaugural show in 2010.[4][11]
Some other notable exhibitions include Moment by Moment: Meditations of the Hand at North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks (2006); On the Absence of Camps at Kunsthaus Dresden (2006); POZA: On the Polishness of Polish Contemporary Art at Real Art Ways, Hartford (2008); and Frauen bei Olympia at Frauenmuseum, Bonn (2009).[4] Weiss has exhibited alongside and collaborated with artists such as Carolee Schneemann,[12] Mona Hatoum, Francis Alys,[6] and Stephen Vitiello among others.[13]
Weiss has given lectures on her work at institutions around the world and her writings have appeared in numerous publications, including New Realities: Being Syncretic (Springer, Wien/New York) and Technoetic Arts (Intellect, London).[3][14]
In 2009 she received the New York Foundation for the Arts award in the interdisciplinary art category.[1] She splits her time between New York and St. Louis, where she is an associate professor at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and faculty affiliate in the Performing Arts Department.[3]
Characteristics
Lamentation
A recurring motif in the artist’s work is the exploration of the ancient ritual of lament.[1][3][14] Group mourning, she states, is more than a response to a specific grief; it can act as a political force. Historically a feminine expression, lamentation stands "in opposition to heroic, masculine fantasies of conquest and power."[5] Through lamentation she draws attention to the complexities of history, incorporating "those who have been perennially absent: the victims and the defeated."[15] According to art critic Adriana Valdes, lamentation is both an expression and a silence; it lacks articulation.[15] Weiss's work focuses on this lack of articulation, "the moment when language collapses in face of the loss of the ability to signify."[5]
Body
Weiss uses her body as an artistic tool,[7] as a vehicle and a palette.[16] Often she employs her body in repetitive and monotonous movements within specific limitations, such as submerging herself at long lengths in a concrete receptacle filled with water (Ennoia) or by rolling around, tracing her silhouette on materials such as sheets of canvas (Leukos) or a bed of books (Phlegethon-Milczenie).[1][2][7]
Performance
Her performances lack dramaturgical plot.[2] They are noted for their syncopated rhythms, which serve to “both disrupt and, paradoxically, prolong time.”[16] She “provides an alternative experience of space and time, which is not end-driven but steady and enduring.”[17]
Drawing
Drawing has been described as the touchstone of her art.[16] It often ties together the various aspects of her art, the technological with the corporeal, the communal with the solitary.[17]
