Monica Bonvicini presents her new installation, The Waiting

Monica Bonvicini, the great Italian artist who won the Kokoschka Prize in 2020, presents a new installation: it is The Waiting, exhibited at Anselm Kiefer’s studio at La Ribaute in Barjac, France.

In The Waiting, a stainless steel railing structure dominates the center of the space. The central element is borrowed from micro-architecture, ubiquitous in airports, stations, at checkouts and more: places where masses of people usually organize, often forced into waiting lines. But the closer you get, the more some interferences with this common image begin to arise. In The Waiting, bars are bent and a pair of handcuffs hang on a chain, creating a minimal but disturbing set design that speaks of conflict, escape, and disobedience.

The Waiting is placed above a ladder in the floor to suggest an underground tunnel, an escape route; an entrance or an exit? The friction between the feeling of protection and the sculpture from which the gaping handcuffs hang is intended to provoke multiple speculations in viewers: what has happened? What will happen? These are the questions Monica Bonvicini seeks to instill in the audience.

The Venetian artist, who often uses construction materials for her art installations, sees this work as a conceptual continuation of two of her landmark pieces, 2003’s Stairway to Hell and 2010’s SCALE OF THINGS (to come), both of which address the false promises of the market and certain problematic urbanistic scenarios; the artist urges the viewer to think not only about the scale of physical architecture (always estimated as the tallest, largest, most luxurious, etc.) but also to the scale of social changes, operated by liberal urban design, as a consequence that is almost always ignored.

At La Ribaute, the site-specific work The Waiting plays with fears and expectations, curiosities and hesitations, aiming to generate questions about society, eros, violence: when perceived as sensitive bodies, architecture and work feed off each other, fully activating only with the visitor’s presence.

Pictured: Monica Bonvicini, The Waiting (2022; stainless steel, chains and handcuffs, 86 x 174 x 468 cm)

Monica Bonvicini presents her new installation, The Waiting

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