dwie

2003-

graphite powder, charcoal, water, pencil on paper, dimensions variable

Published:

Monika Weiss - Nirbhaya, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, edited by Halina Gajewska, 2021

Monika Weiss - Vessels, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, edited by Dina Helal, 2004

*Dwie II*, 2003
Charcoal on photographs backdrop paper, 85 x 105 inches. View of the drawing at Experimental Intermedia Foundation, New York, where the artist was in residence b. 2001-2005. Courtesy the artist. Photographic documentation by Hermann Feldhaus

Artist Statement

Dwie in Polish mean “two” in the feminine. In my drawings and moving image works a figure often appears as if doubled. Through this approach I hope to connote mirroring of the self but also sisterhood. In 1999, I began a cycle of large-scale charcoal drawings that depict such pairs, which are either bending towards each other or mirroring each other. I continue with a similar approach in many of my film projections, including for example Sustenazo (2010-2012), Wrath (2015), Nirbhaya Projections (2020-) and Two Laments (19 Cantos) (2015-2020). In these works the viewer sees a female protagonist moving extremely slowly and silently, bound by the ground, who becomes two figures. Thanks to the film montage I concurrently represent the same figure/protaginist filmed twice. I am overlapping and layering different time sequences in my moving image works and depicting doubling, mirroring, and shadowing in my drawings, to create a space of circular time, where there is no begging nor end.

- Monika Weiss

Essay Excerpt

Some of Weiss’ most compelling drawings are performative wherein performance emerges from the experience of drawing itself. Mark making is entwined with the encompassing of physical movement so as to communicate conditions associated with the artist’s presence in a public space: and lament and trauma, themes that run throughout her work. In these works, drawing transcends its putative or more recognizable function, and conveys heightened performative awareness forged through the unassailable connection between body and the marks that it is capable of producing. Here, boundaries become blurred, revealing both the richness of the artist’s practice and the peril of imposing categories. Performativity can also be found in individual works, for example Dwie , one of a group in which Weiss used her arm to smear charcoal, evoking movement, and creating a ghostly outline of her body curled and standing.

- Mark McDonald, curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Drawing Consciousness: Monika Weiss in Monika Weiss-Nirbhaya, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2021, pp. 54 - 76 [to read the essay click here]