Monica Bonvicini.
Structural Psychodrama #5
15 Sept 2022 – 7 May 2023
Bauhaus Building, workshop wing
daily 10 am – 5 pm
In her work, Monica Bonvicini focuses on space, both as a system of overlapping political, psychosocial, gender-specific and linguistic aspects, and in terms of its material and immaterial boundaries. In her multifaceted practice, Bonvicini explores power structures that shape gender, sexuality, space, the environment, and institutions.
Created specifically for the Bauhaus Building, her new installation Structural Psychodrama #5 establishes a critical connection to the architecture around it: to the workshop wing. Several large, slightly tilted mirror surfaces attract, direct, and reflect the spectators’ gaze, who thus repeatedly become the focus of the art work, invited to perform in front of the mirrors. Handcuffs attached to long chains likewise prompt interaction – but this is not possible.
The title Structural Psychodrama #5 refers to psychotherapy, here specifically to the psychodrama action method founded by Jacob Levy Moreno (1889–1974). With her architecture-sculpture, Bonvicini too offers visitors a tangible experience of encounters and action in the here and now. The addition of the word “structural” to the title refers to a social dimension of the work that transcends the individual. Bonvicini has produced a series of consecutively numbered works under this name over recent years.
The Artist
Monica Bonvicini‘s work has been shown in numerous international solo and group exhibitions, among others at the Kunsthaus Graz; the Belvedere 21, Vienna; the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art; the Fridericianum, Kassel; the KW Institute für Contemporary Art, Berlin; the Castello di Rivoli, Turin; the New Museum, New York; the Lenbachhaus, Munich; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Art Sonje Center, Seoul, and many other venues. Bonvicini has participated in the world’s top biennials in Berlin, Venice, New Orleans, Gwangju, São Paulo, Istanbul, Shanghai and Santa Fe, and at the Triennial in Paris. Permanent outdoor sculptures by Bonvicini in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, at Bjørvika-Fjord in front of the Norwegian Opera and Ballet, Oslo, and at the Weserburg modern art museum in Bremen, have become major attractions.
Monica Bonvicini was born in Venice and studied art at the Berlin University of the Arts and the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles. From 2003 to 2017, she taught Performance Art and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Since 2017, she has taught as Professor of Sculpture at the Berlin University of the Arts. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennial (1999), the National Gallery Prize for Young Art (2005), the Roland Prize for Art in Public Space (2013), the Hans Platschek Prize for Art and Writing (2019), and the Oskar Kokoschka Prize (2020). In 2012, she was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
Bonvicini’s exhibition Hurricanes and Other Catastrophes is at the Kunst Museum Winterthur from 9 September to 13 November 2022. The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin will show a comprehensive solo exhibition of the artist’s work from 25 November 2022 to 7 May 2023.
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