Monica Bonvicini

Monica Bonvicini, born in 1965 in Venice, Italy, is a leading contemporary visual artist known for her incisive exploration of architecture, power structures, gender roles, and space through sculpture, installation, video, and drawing. Based in Berlin, her work critically examines the socio-political dimensions of built environments, often employing sharp humor and irony to challenge patriarchal and institutional norms. Honored with the prestigious Golden Lion at the 1999 Venice Biennale and the National Gallery Prize for Young Artists in Berlin in 2005, Bonvicini's art bridges physical structures with cultural critique. She studied at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia and has held professorships in performative arts and sculpture at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts and Berlin's University of the Arts since 2003. Her internationally exhibited works often feature language, humor, and site-specificity, confronting viewers with questions about freedom, power, and authorship. Bonvicini’s enduring impact resonates in her ability to weave architecture's symbolic and literal presence into critical art discourse that challenges social conventions.

Photo Monica Bonvicini: Axel Schmidt