The house, as the location for the construction of identity, as the domestic site in which relationships and desires are shaped, is a theme that Monica Bonvicini has been exploring since the early 1990s in works such as HausFrau Swinging and Wallfuckin’. Destruction, natural disaster and climate crisis have been on her mind since the 1992 photo series Where Air Dwells, and over the last 15 years in her series of large black and white drawings, Hurricanes and other Catastrophes.
Monica Bonvicini's exhibition for Kunsthaus Graz is centred on themes that lie at the core of the artist’s research: an examination of architecture, literature and the construction of sexual and gender identity.
Following the show at OGR in Turin, the large-scale architectural sculpture As Walls Keep Shifting is presented in Graz in a state of complete but calculated disaster. Half of a family house reconstructed in 1:1 scale is scattered across the exhibition space, as if a hurricane has just passed through and torn the structure apart.
The show at Kunsthaus Graz starts with the video work I See a White Building, Pink and Blue (2020), which also provides the soundtrack for all of the installations. Other works included are the carpet of photos Breach of Décor (2020), the photo series Italian Homes (2019) as well as the cast of a little broom, Swept Away (2019). Accompanying the structure of As Walls Keep Shifting, a large print will be installed that is made up of collages of commercials and calendars featuring lots of skin. The mix of naked bodies, desires and ambitions as well as the use of bodies as commodity is also a key theme for the artist, who has also explored these issues in paper works such as Neck to Knees (2016) and Hard Strings (2017), and the series of Eternmales drawings (2000).
The question of home, commodity, desire and sex is continued in a new work, treating elements of fetish as sculptural and performative objects that invite the public – within the institutional context of the museum – to live out the voyeurism that is intrinsic to all museum visits.
