Monika Meler
Artist Statement
The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 has proven to be one of
the most important events in recent history, not only for
social and political reasons, but for contemporary art as
well. Germany’s reunification brought artists from Eastern
Europe into the Western context even as the notion of a
canon was itself questioned. A plethora of artists began to
gain access to the Western art world, which was not
entirely new to Eastern European artists. Many of these
individuals succeeded in their aims to give Westerners a
hard look at the desperation of Communist regimes. Having
been born and raised in Brodnica, Poland in the 1980’s, I
am a product of a tension between Eastern and Western
Europe and my art is a testament to and a re-examination of
my memories of this time.
At the age of ten, a year before Poland’s “Solidarity”
movement succeeded, my family and I immigrated to Chicago.
Although Chicago has a thriving Polish community, it was
clear to me growing up that every Pole was trying to shed
aspects of their past. I truly missed Poland, and as a
child, I did not realize how Communism affected the
landscape and the Poland that I desperately clung to. I
lived in the United States without returning to my home
country for fourteen uninterrupted years, and in this time
Poland’s political and economic situation changed
drastically.
During my first visit to Poland after the fourteen-year
absence, the spaces and landscape that I occupied as a
child changed significantly. These changes made me realize
that the existence of some places and events were purely
fictional and invented. Yet this did not matter because no
matter how much I looked at these actual places, I could
only remember them the way that they had existed in my
mind. The image of Brodnica that exists in my memory is so
strongly engraved, it can never be replaced by actuality;
my memory is my reality. The house in which I grew up was
recently painted pink by the new owners, yet it will always
be the yellow that I remember from my childhood. The road
that led to my home had been paved in my absence, yet every
time I think of it my mind remembers the unpaved road. My
work explores the invented landscapes and events that are
components of these cherished memories of my childhood.
My prints, drawings, and installations invite viewers to be
in, look upon, and explore these spaces and events that
exist in my mind. I often combine installation with
printmaking because it is important for me to
re-contextualize the art of the print. When I installed 20
small boxes filled with prints in a dark space of a
non-functioning theatre in Indiana for a piece
titled Fragmenty,
I found that removing boundaries of the print and putting
it into the context of an installation gave the prints a
new language. I am also interested in a trans-disciplinary
approach, which has helped me explore intersections of art,
literature, contemporary theory, and philosophy.
40 Cures
For Nostalgia is an
installation based on Julia Kristeva's notions of the
abject, and explores the concept that one thing can be both
attractive and repulsive. The installation contained items
with abject qualities such as hair, dirt, and insects, yet
many aspects of this work could be considered beautiful,
desirable and attractive.
I use a multitude of media to explore my ideas and
identity. Ideas transcend media, which means that my work
can take different forms while exploring memory, nostalgia,
and the abject. This way of working allows me to delve into
my concepts while always negotiating the tensions that
invariably appear between different media, which is similar
to the way that I constantly negotiate the tension between
past, present, and future in everyday life.