Monica Bonvicini - Power Joy Humor Resistance

Power Joy Humor Resistance is an impressive light installation created by Monica Bonvicini for the Italian Cultural Institute C.M. Lerici in Stockholm.

The use of language as a sculptural medium, the use of industrial materials, the interest in architecture and issues such as gender equality are distinctive features of Monica Bonvicini's work, which can also be found in Power Joy Humor Resistance.

In her site-specific installations, Monica Bonvicini investigates feminism and gender issue. The artist recently focused her research on the feminist struggle, which is configured as a positive and constructive force since it has a goal. These issues recur especially in a series of spray paint drawings based on essays and poems’ quotations referred to these same topics that she revises in order to obtain a new form of poetics.

Among these multiple spray paint drawings, we can find And Resistance, which Monica Bonvicini conceptually get inspiration from in the large neon sign conceived for the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm. The artist also takes inspiration from the book "Rage Becomes Her. The Power of Women’s Anger" by Soraya Chemaly, American journalist and women's rights activist. Power Joy Humor Resistance can also be read as a sign of participation in the Black Lives Matter’s international movement and in the LGTBQA + community, but also as a wish for a different post-Covid19 future. Monica Bonvicini demonstrates to be aware of the language’s importance by placing the neon sign on the most visible point of the Institute designed by Gio Ponti in 1958. She exploits the power of commercial semiotics to send a positive message in the darkness of the long Swedish winter.

Power Joy Humor Resistance closes a trilogy of site-specific installations conceived by contemporary artists with the aim of promoting the Italian art in Sweden and highlighting the role of the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm as a place for dialogue and meeting between two cultures. In 2018 the Institute presented Relational, a luminous installation similar to a light’s net designed by Bianco-Valente. In 2019 Mariangela Levita created TUTTO.Leonardo, a multimedia installation dedicated to Leonardo Da Vinci’s 500th anniversary.

BIOGRAPHY:
Monica Bonvicini studied art in Berlin and at Cal Arts, Valencia, CA. Since 2003 she holds a position as Professor for Performative Arts and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Beginning in October 2017 she assumes the professorship for sculpture at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. She lives and works in Berlin. Monica Bonvicini emerged as visual artist and started exhibiting internationally in the mid-1990s. Her multifaceted practice—which investigates the relationship between architecture, power, gender, space, surveillance and control—is translated into works that question the meaning of making art, the ambiguity of language, and the limits and possibilities attached to the ideal of freedom. Dry-humored, direct, and imbued with historical, political and social references, Bonvicini’s art never refrains from establishing a critical connection with the sites where it is exhibited, the materials that comprise it, and the roles of spectator and creator. This approach, which has been at the core of her production since her first solo exhibition at the California Institute of the Arts in 1991, has formally evolved over the years without betraying its analytical force and inclination to challenge the viewer’s perspective while taking hefty sideswipes at socio-cultural conventions. 

Bonvicini has earned several awards, including the Golden Lion at the Biennale di Venezia (1999); the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst, from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (2005); the Rolandpreis für Kunst for art in the public from the Foundation Bremen, Germany (2013), the Hans Platschek Prize for art and writing, Germany (2019), the Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Austria (2020). Her work has been featured in many prominent biennials, including Berlin (1998, 2004, 2014), La TriennaIe Paris (2012), Istanbul (2003, 2017), Gwangju (2006), New Orleans (2008), and Venice (1999, 2001, 2005, 2011, 2015). She has had solo exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2002), Modern Art Oxford, England (2003), Secession, Vienna (2003), Staedtisches Museum Abteiberg (2005, 2012), Sculpture Center (2007), the Art Institute of Chicago (2009), the Kunstmuseum Basel (2009), Frac des Pays de la Loire (2009), the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel (2011), Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malága, Spain (2011), the Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2012), BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art (2016), Berlinische Galerie (2017), Belvedere 21 (2019) and Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2020). In 2012 Bonvicini has been appointed Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. She is currently represented by Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich; König Galerie, Berlin; Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna; Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan; and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

*images: Monica Bonvicini, Power Joy Humor Resistance, 2020, copyright Monica Bonvicini and VG Bild-Kunst / Bildupphovsrätt i Sverige, courtesy the artist and Italian Cultural Institute Stockholm, photo David Puig Serinyà.