Monica Bonvicini

The monumental sculpture (12 x 17 x 16 meters in size) is an interpretation of Caspar David Friedrich’s 1824 painting Das Eismeer. Bonvicini reuses the imagery of the ice masses seen in Friedrich’s painting as a symbolic reference to romanticism and its ideals that established different common and fixed clichés, such as art and art professionalism, but also of nature and scientific exploration.

Reacting to the changing tides, the installation turns around its axis and moves within a range of 50 meters.

The mirrors and transparent pieces provide constantly changing reflections.

Bonvicini describes the work as “A monument to a state of permanent change.”

Monica Bonvicini (born 1965 in Venice ) is a German-Italian artist who works with installation, sculpture, video, photography and drawing mediums.

Bonvicini describes her practice as an exploration of relationshsips between architecture and space, power, gender and sexuality.

Bonvicini studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.

Having studied in Berlin since end of the 1980s, Bonvicini began exhibiting her work internationally in the mid-1990s.

In 1998, Bonvicini was featured in the 1st Berlin Biennale, and in 1999 in the 48th Venice Biennial curated by Harald Szeemann.

Bonvicini has been a scholar since many years, starting as a guest professor at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, in 1998.

This work, entitled I Believe the Skin of Things as in That of Women, was created in 1998 by Bonvicini for an exhibition at Galerie Krobath Wimmer in Vienna.

Harald Szeemann saw the work and invited Bonvicini to take a part in the upcoming Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Golden Lion next year.

The work examines gender relations, manifested in the field of architecture and construction.

Bonvicini describes the work as a confrontation with the “boys club” attitude that often encompasses the world of architecture.

The installation is an architectural space, constructed out of drywall panels with quotes from famous male architects, including Auguste Perret and Adolf Loos, drawn on it with graphite.

The title of the work is the famous quote by Le Corbusier.

The quotes are intertwined with cartoon-styled compositions of naked men performing a variety of sexual acts.

Some of these drawings refer to the photographs of early modernist architecture that were supposed to depict and establish a canon of a new, modern domestic dwelling.

The work is an example of Bonvicini’s dry humour and fearless content that is seen in many of her other works.

With the architectural installation I Believe in the Skin of Things as in That of Women, 1999, she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1999 along with Bruna Esposito, Luisa Lambri, Paola Pivi, and Grazia Toderi.

Since then Bonvicini has participated in more than 20 international contemporary art biennials, including the Santa Fe Biennial (1999), Gwangju Biennale (2006), the first New Orleans Biennial (2008), the Berlin Biennale (1998, 2003, 2014), the Venice Biennale (1999, 2001, 2005, 2011, 2015 ), the Istanbul Biennial (2003 -2017), and the Busan Biennale (2020).

From 2003 to 2017 she was a Professor of Sculpture and Performance Art at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, Austria.

In 2005, she was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst, Berlin, Germany, followed by The Roland Prize for Art in Public Spaces, Bremen, Germany, in 2012, the Hans-Platschek-Prize, Hamburg, Gemany, in 2019, The Acacia, Premio alla Carriera, Milan, Italy, in 2019 and the Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Vienna, Austria in 2020.

Bonvicini works with a variety of materials, not limited to, drywall, steel, polyurethane, metal, chains, wood, spray paint, aluminum, ink, tempera, concrete, and glass.

Bonvicini cites the usage of industrial material as a means of exploring the construction of sexual identity, as well as its clichés and origins, via architecture.

Her research regularly delves into psychoanalysis, labour, feminism, design and urbanity, as well as how private and institutional spaces dictate codex of behavior.

The artworks often employ language and text, humour and irony.

Some of her pieces are courageously explicit, thus pushing and undermining institutional boundaries and questioning the role of spectator.

Bonvicini is also commonly described as working site-specifically, creating discursive displays that relate to an exhibiting venue and its operational context.

Bonvicini critically explores the legacy of modernism as both an artistic and a social period.

She also frequently references minimalism, conceptual art, Institutional Critique, as well as feminist and queer subcultures and civil rights and other political movements.

A permanent installation She Lies was publicly revealed on May 11, 2010.

The work, commissioned by Public Art Norway, floats in Oslofjord in front of the Oslo Opera House.

The work is made of styrofoam, stainless steel, reflecting glass panels, and glass splinters and stands on a concrete pontoon that is equipped with an anchoring system.

In 2012 she was appointed Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

RUN is a permanent installation at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London that was installed for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The work’s composition and title were inspired by the lyrics and language in popular music.

Since 2017, she has been Professor of Sculpture at the Universität der Künste Berlin.

Bonvicini has also been invited to contribute as a guest lecturer in major institutions such as Columbia University, New York/US, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin/Italy, Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel/Switzerland, Museum Ludwig, Cologne/Germany, Whitechapel Gallery, London/UK, Kunsthochschule Mainz, Mainz/Germany, among others.

In 2022, Monica Bonvicini obtained German citizenship and was elected as a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, in the Visual Arts section.