Monika Sosnowska’s sculptures question structural and ideological longevity

The Espoo Museum of Modern Art (EMMA), Finland is currently presenting Monika Sosnowska: An Order Apart, from March 06 – December 15, 2024. The show brings together six large-scale sculpture works by Sosnowska, which respond to the exhibition space. An Order Apart is organised in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth, Switzerland and the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Poland, and is curated by Pernilla Wiik, curator, EMMA. Wiik joins STIR for an interview that explores the Polish artist’s work and the ongoing exhibition.

The sheer size of her pieces forces viewers to navigate around the sculptures, engaging them physically and altering their spatial awareness.
– Pernilla Wiik, curator, EMMA

An Order Apart extends the exhibition space it is being shown in, through pieces that engage with the concrete brutalist architecture of the WeeGee Exhibition Centre. Interestingly, Sosnowska’s sculptures carry a peculiar lightness, at odds with the imposing weight Brutalism is known for. For example, Pipe (2020) appears as though a gigantic, paper-thin strip of the exhibition hall’s stark white wall has been ripped out, laying discarded on the floor and her hourglass-shaped Concrete and Rebar (2023) feels precariously suspended in mid-air. The curator notes that the sculptor works on a large scale in order to create an active engagement between audiences and her artworks. She tells STIR, “The sheer size of her pieces forces viewers to navigate around the sculptures, engaging them physically and altering their spatial awareness. Sosnowska’s large sculptures command attention and can transform ordinary environments into thought-provoking spaces.” Throughout the exhibition, viewers will find their understanding of structure and materiality challenged by Sosnowska’s misdirection, through the false sense of flimsiness and weightlessness that sculpture installation works such as Pipe and Concrete and Rebar suggest.

When faced with what appears to be a paper-thin shaving of a building, audiences are prompted to meditate on the perceived stability of human-made structures. Could the homes and offices we occupy be ripped apart like paper too? Tugging on this line of thought, the certainty we associate with urbanity and modernity comes into question.

Sosnowska’s large-scale installation works interact with the architecture that surrounds them in a manner that makes them both feel vulnerable — and yet neither the artworks nor the space are—in a sense—diminished or made to appear small. She manages to bestow a sense of fragility on the exhibition space by seemingly dissecting it and does so without relying on anything resembling a destructive act. There is no sense of violence to be found in the artist’s work. At the same time, her sculptures command a certain respect from the audience and in terms of scale, must be approached as equals, or in some cases, as superiors.

It is no accident that Sosnowska’s installations are being shown in a building constructed in a brutalist idiom, an architectural hallmark of socialist nations. Born in 1972, the installation artist grew up in Poland during its transition from the Polish People’s Republic (1952-1989)—a Soviet satellite state—to democratic Poland as we know it today. As the exhibition page notes, “Sosnowska’s works comment, among other things, on the significance of the buildings from the socialist era and on people’s relationship to them.” The political implications of the artist’s works being shown in the WeeGee building—itself a former print factory—cannot be ignored when reading this show. The exhibition appears to pick and tear at a massive brutalist building, possessed of cold concrete floors and pylons and in doing so, renders it seemingly fragile. By extension, this reminds audiences of the impermanence of the political system associated with such structures. In this manner, Monika Sosnowska: An Order Apart sensitises us to the fleeting nature of modern structures, both in their physical and ideological dimensions.

‘Monika Sosnowska: An Order Apart’ is being shown at the Espoo Museum of Modern Art (EMMA) in Finland, from March 06 – December 15, 2024.