When I met Monica Bonvicini on the occasion of ‘Stagecage’—her new show at Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna—what struck me as surprising was her loud, contagious, liberating laugh. The reason why I point this out is that this laugh, in the form of humor, is key to her work. An irony that accompanies the slogans, the chains, the neon lights, the mirrors, even the aluminum models of family homes—the new works on show. Her laugh punctuated our conversation, shaking and emphasizing some passages like an orchestra cymbal. In this exhibition, Bonvicini addresses topics that are at the same time historical and contemporary: identity, power, labor. These themes have animated her work over the past two decades. Her installations have raised questions about how architecture and the environment forge our relationship with society, being inevitably linked to memory and forms of power, both in the public and private realm. The Italian, Berlin-based artist has been recently fascinated by the function and aesthetics of Renaissance architectural models. In this show, she presents the act of building a house as an exercise that eviscerates the many significances of facades and building materials. While furnishing these houses with new elements that push her creative horizon towards a new awareness of identity, she opens up a new vision of contemporary feminism that, for her, could be capable of welcoming a new idea of feminine anger.
