Picked Up and Thrown is part of a recent body of work which began in the
wake of insurgent movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. First
exhibited at Kunsthalle Bielefeld in the solo exhibition Monica Bonvicini:
Lover‘s Material, these drawings feature text on soft pink, grey or black
backgrounds with faint grid lines, some incorporating images cast from
sprayed chains or barbed wire. Christina Végh, Director of Kunsthalle
Bielefeld, describes the series as „a cartography of emotions,“ exploring
various modes of connection and tension within relationships. Themes such
as love, aggression, feminism, and rage are depicted through fragments
from notable authors and literary works, in this case Roland Barthes and
Margaret Atwood, that have been reshaped by the artist into new syntactic
and semantic forms.