Monica Dengo - Artist

Its very difficult to choose which aspect of Monica's art to highlight as she is versatile and prolific. But for me, her Book as Body series is unforgettable!.


BOOK as BODY

Monica chose a black male model and a white female model and did gestural writing all over their bodies. She then collaborated with the photographer Marco Ambrosito to film the models. Tsering Wangmo Dhompa wrote poetry which accompanied the series on the opposite pages to the photographs.

"BAB series is based on the certainty that our realty exists because we've given it a name, that our representation of the world is as important as - if not more than - its existence a priori and that we, along with the world we're a part of, are defined by our words. - We've chosen the nude body and the writing that defines and transforms it until it becomes the body itself. The text on the body is an entirety of illegible signs, a web of letters that envelop the skin cover and replace it".

Dhompa's poetry and her "dharma" thoughts have been used for the calligraphic illegible textures of writing on the body. Photographic images result in which the person tends to vanish, leaving her own description, a wrapper of writing. A page of writing, side by side with the body - as in a book - becomes a mirror where the body is the page and the page the body.


"The body is a way to acknowledge the self that is not there".
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa


I think the way in which the depth is negated by the pattern of letters over a three dimensional form is incredible.
Monica, thank you for coming to the UK to share your art with us.
http://www.monicadengo.com/bab.html

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