Lethe

2022 -

graphite powder, water, resin, pencil, and dry pigment on rice paper

32 x 22 inches each

photographic documentation by Jean Vong

Artist Statement

Lethe is a cycle of 5 medium-scale drawings made with resin, graphite powder, water and dry ink on paper. I created Lethe in the aftermath of the disappearance of women’s right to choose, when in 2022 the 1973 Roe v. Wade law was overturned in the United States.

The Ancient Greek word Lethe (the mythological River of Oblivion) appears in many of my works as a title and as a metaphor. In my Lethe Room (2004) I lie inside a rectangular sculpture filled with layers of paper. With my eyes closed, using both hands, I imprint the sheets with my body and leave marks and stains with chunks of charcoal and graphite. In my large-scale public project Drawing Lethe (2006), pedestrians were invited to join me in the act of lying down and drawing around our bodies onto an enormous canvas covering the floor of the World Finanacial Center Winter Garden, located across from Ground Zero where in 2006 workers were still searching for the remain of the victims of September 11th attacts. This landscape of drawing was accompanied by a sound composition heard from beneath the floor, providing a sonic companion to the silent acts of mark making. Rather then confronting, retraumatising, or exposing those impacted, my work relies on poetry and musicality of gestures, movements, traces, and voices, and as forms of collective affect.

- Monika Weiss

Essay Excerpt

Drawing Lethe and other works that enact drawing, embody endurance and the concentration on physicality. Lying down is also a widespread act of political resistance and the drawn marks expressive of that prone and vulnerable state. Julia Herzberg describes how Weiss ‘[…] works with her prostrate body as symbolically against and opposing the notion of the heroic body, one historically in an upright position, often representative of power.’ Weiss has described the significance of lying down as an ‘ethical stance’ a symbolic form of letting go. (…) Drawing and performance are expressed differently throughout Weiss’ work. In the examples discussed above, the combination and resolution of elements (drawing, music, video, objects) depends on the articulation of each while acknowledging their codependence. Elsewhere, elements are realigned where drawing, rather than its association with performance or enactment is the focus, through prioritizing surface and media. The five large charcoal drawings Achea Rheon (Rivers of Sorrow), 2003 were included in the 2004 Vessels exhibition and thus, relate to a wider body of work. Their shared formal qualities, however, allow them to be seen as independent works as they were intended. Four of the bodily forms appear in a state of restless flux, emerging, folding and struggling before vanishing back into the energy that initially enabled their passage. The technique reveals the artist’s dexterity and facility in which the charcoal is applied to achieve the lightest of marks to support the densely worked opaque areas. The middle drawing is counterpoint to those that flank it and embodies the moment of complete absorption where the figuration hovers between dissolution and emergence, before setting off on a path that is more recognizable. Framed and evenly spaced on the wall, this group demonstrates the artist’s trust in the efficacy of the medium to propel what motivates the works: the articulation of movement and trans- formation, the antithesis of stasis. There are clear connections between Achea Rheon and the works described earlier where the body as conduit articulates marks. With Achea Rheon, performativity emerges at a remove, solely through drawing that is meditated and has ulterior purpose.

- 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]