Monika Weiss
Sustenazo
installation

Exhibition opening: 12.03.2010, 6 pm
Exhibition runs through: 03.05.2010
Curator: Milada Ślizińska
Castle Cellars

Press Conference: Friday, March 12 at 12 pm with the artist present.

FILM

The exhibition Sustenazo by Monika Weiss is a multi-media installation comprising video projections, sound compositions, drawings, objects and photography. Installed in the cellars of the Ujazdowski Castle, the only surviving portion of the original castle, the works in the exhibition are partially inspired by a specific event that took place at the castle during the onset of the Warsaw Uprising. On August 6, 1944 the German Army forced over 1,800 patients and medical staff to abruptly evacuate the Ujazdowski Hospital, (now CCA) with an overnight notice. The artist juxtaposes selected original documents related to the hospital’s exodus with other images and themes, thus creating new meanings by opening up a space of historical memory and translating it into both timeless and contemporary contexts.

Monika Weiss is an artist whose practice explores relationships between history and memory, and provides the viewer with a potentially altered experience of time and space. As part of her process the artist conducts extensive research and collaborates with various specialists such as historians and archivists. In the words of British art critic Guy Brett, “Weiss creates an alternative experience of space and time, which is not end-driven but steady and enduring, establishing and deepening a human presence. Her work is a remarkable, individual counterpoint between technological media (video projection) and the ancient activity of drawing. Sound is also an important element, meticulously controlled, which lifts the silent filmed actions into another emotional register.”

Sustenazo (meaning in Greek, “to sigh, to lament inaudibly together”) explores visual and musical aspects of the ancient ritual of Lament and its historical connection to feminine expression, especially as contrasted with the notion of the heroic myth within the narrative of war. Sound compositions created by the artist in Sustenazo incorporate voices of surviving witnesses of the Ujazdowski Hospital’s expulsion, along with German voices reading passages from Goethe’s Faust. Using the specific historical example of a crime committed on a hospital - one of many painful atrocities routinely committed within the politics of war - Sustenazo speaks to the essence of a hospital as a center for healing, juxtaposed to the oppression of all human rights throughout time. The artist creates a poetic environment built from layers of images, objects and sounds opening a potential space for each viewer to respond to their own assumptions and conclusions.

Born in Warsaw in 1964, Monika Weiss lives and works in New York City and is currently Professor of New Media and Drawing at the Department of Art, Washington College. Her works have been exhibited both in the U.S. and internationally. Weiss’ solo exhibitions include the artist’s first comprehensive survey organized by the Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York in 2005. The artist’s most recent exhibitions include among others Museum Montanelli, Prague, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, Frauenmuseum, Bonn, Kunsthaus Dresden and North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks. In 2009 the artist was awarded the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in interdisciplinary category. Monika Weiss’s work is represented by Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montreal and Remy Toledo Projects, New York.

Sustenazo was created with the help of: Central Medical Library in Warsaw, The Warsaw Rising Museum, The Historical Museum of Warsaw, Media in Motion, Berlin, Krystyna Zalewska M.D., Krystyna Janda, Magdalena Grąbczewska, Susan Mann, Mark Dorrance, Gillian Lipton

The project was realized as a result of Monika Weiss’ residency in spring and autumn 2009 at artists-in-residence laboratory CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw.

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation is pleased to support American Season with funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

The exhibition was organized in cooperation with The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw.

Media support: Gazeta Wyborcza, Artinfo.pl