"Dead Earth, A Place of No Escape"

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Ausstellung in Berlin, Germany : "Dead Earth, A Place of No Escape"

The work of Rachel Monosov, poetic and rich in symbolisms, often draws on autobiographical references, reflecting on the artist's personal history. The Body, crucial to Monosov's practice, is often choreographed in the space carrying fragments of memories, engraved by the discipline, the violence and the power structures that have shaped it. The artist's background as a Soviet-era child, her family's immigration to Israel in 1991, and her move to Europe upon reaching adulthood, fuels her focus on the relationship between body and nation-state.

For her new piece, premiering at Centrum as part of Berlin Art Week 2023, Monosov threads together how geopolitical power struggle takes shape by control of land and resources, implementing nationally or racially segregated labor, manipulating locations of ruins, transforming them into forests, and denying recognition of native land rights through legal means. Dead Earth, A Space of No Escape consists of a sculptural installation which is periodically activated by performative interventions choreographed by the artist in collaboration with performers Camilla Brogaard, Rachell Bo Clark, and the opera singer Julia Shelkovskaia. This first iteration of a work in progress, came into being after a series of workshops among the artist and performers who worked site-specifically bearing in mind the aesthetic and architectural parameters of Centrum.

Performances
Thursday 14 September, at 19:45 & 20:45
Saturday 16 September, at 16:30 & 17:30
Sunday 17 September, at 16:30 & 17:30

Performers: Camilla Brogaard, Rachell Bo Clark, Julia Shelkovskaia
Curator: Jorgina Stamogianni

Rachel Monosov (b. 1987) lives and works in Berlin. She holds two MFAs in Filmmaking and Fine Art from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent, Belgium, and a BA from Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, Israel. Monosov's work has been included in exhibitions at Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Art Institute of Chicago, Palazzo delle Espozitioni in Rome, 11th Bamako Biennale, 13th Biennale of Dakar, and the Zimbabwe Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. In 2019 she was awarded the Praxisstipendium of German Academy Rome Villa Massimo. Her work has been acquired into the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Block Museum at Northwestern University, and the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. Monosov is a co-founder of the CTG Collective.

The exhibition Dead Earth, A Place of No Escape is part of Berlin Art Week 2023 and realised with the generous support of Catinca Tabacaru Gallery.