Monica Bonvicini

(Italy) *1965 in Venice

In her sculptural and installation works, Monica Bonvicini questions the interweaving of architecture and gender roles. She shows how built spaces reflect and shape human behaviour and social structures – often combined with violence and negative emotions. “Tree of Anger” can be read against this background. On red aluminium plates attached to the avenue of trees in the palace garden, anger is in part formulated in openly hostile statements. Next to them are more subtle sentences such as: “This is unrequited love, you stay home with it” – a reference to emotional (in)dependence and to the attribution of domestic feelings to women. These text fragments come partly from the poem “Who Said it Was Simple” by the prominent intellectual Audre Lorde and partly from the short stories by the American writer Diane Williams. The work thus opens up multi-layered feminist readings.
Monica Bonvicini studied at the Berlin University of the Arts and the California Institute of the Arts. Her expansive works have been presented in exhibitions at prestigious institutions and renowned biennials worldwide, including five times at the Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Golden Lion in 1999. She teaches as a professor at the UdK Berlin.