Monica Mays is a prominent visual and performance artist, based in Amsterdam working with par-anthropological methods. Her works "Chrysalis and Chrysalis II" are exhibited in a group show "Emotions are facts" in Luxembourg Nosbaum Reding Art Gallery.
Curated by Chloé Bonnie More, she is sharing the same exhibition with internationally acclaimed artists such as Miriam Cahn, Carmen Ayala Marín, Melanie bonajo, Kong Shengki, Konstantina Krikzoni, Boryana Petkova, Zohreh Zavareh. Among them Miriam Cahn (b. 1949, Switzerland), one of the most influential painters alive whom will represent Netherlands in Venice Biennale in 2022.
In the catalogue of exhibition "Emotions are Fact", Curator Chloé Bonnie More wrote below text for Monica Mays' work:
In the same way the sculpture Chrysalis by Monica Mays comes to upset our wanderings in space and our relationship with reality. The artist’s anthropological research extends throughout the work which takes themes from everyday domestic life as well as forms and materials that speak to a collective and cultural memory. In her working of materials the artist creates an encounter between the human and the hybrid in order to bypass any kind of nostalgia. In essence, the experience of the collective or thedisplay rules (5), which often hold emotions at arms length are communicated here in the work of Monica Mays by the reappropriation of a common materiality. In this way Monica Mays proposes a vocabulary of gaps that only our attention to the invisible is able to understand. This desire to seize intangible traditional narratives in order to transform them into a fictional utopia underlines the socio-political interdisciplinarity of the artist.
The musicality of Monica's work begins with the invisibility of her vocabulary and intangible narrative. Her work touches to the viewer's unconsciousness in an abstract manner; a quality that mostly music is thought to possess.
When analyzed closer; the space and time, rhythm and movement, colors and form also features musical characteristics.
The space: Two bodies, have their own volume but also they are placed in different corners. They are like two bodies lying separated from each other as well as interacting each other. It's like the fugue themes that starts with one voice and followed by the other; sometimes reverse, mirrored but always speaking in between them. With only two bodies and two movements; they can be seen as prelude and the fugue in the same tonality or the solo concertos.
This unique use of space gives the perception of time, rhythm and movement: It looks like it is stable and not moving (like dead) however it has its own continuous rhythm. One simple idea is repeating and expanding on its way (like J.S. Bach's cello suites, fugues or contemporary minimalist piano pieces). In music, not only high metronom values but the changes in harmony, pitch, timbre, and rotundity also allows movement. In this context, Mays' work reflects the complexity and the contrast of the human emotions and unconsciousness. Emotion comes from a Latin word emovere, to move. We talk of being "moved" by our emotions, and we are "moved" when those we love show their deeper feelings to us.
The form completes the above mentioned qualities. It is self evident; we are made of different materials, different emotions. Either we want or not, they burst out from inside and find a way to go out. There is no strict form; in this sense, they are more resemblant with preludes and fantasias as well as minimalistic contemporary piano music.
As a last element; colors are usually associated with the pitch in music. -the best examples of this is considered as Kandinsky's paintings. Bright colors are higher pitches and dark colors can be lower pitches. The underlying feelings (which is represented by darker ones) are not seen / visible to the eye as much as bright ones and low pitches are not heard as much as the melody. In this sense, light colors can represent happiness, sadness, love or anger on the other hand, dark colors may be loneliness, desire, empathy, hate or heartbreak.
The soft colors in Mays' works looks like in harmony in itself but not between themselves. It looks innocent and harmless in the beginning but the more you look at it the more violent it become. with the different materials! They are contrasting and indicating 2 separate bulk of emotions. Doctrine of affections in Baroque era also emphasizes that the passions could be represented by their outward visible or audible signs and that music is capable of arousing a variety of specific emotions within the listener.
The femininity of her works is very attractive, even though she is making gender fluid works.
It's also inevitable because the artist is female, the bags are the same length of her, and the materials resemble woman hair and woman cloth. Like all modern individuals, all the spectrum of gender carries the same complicated, messy, dirty and mixed feelings that has to be understood, reorganized and "cleaned". Furthermore, her work, including Chrysalis, is not for living rooms, it has a narrative and conveys the meaning through the space and in a conceptuality. It shouldn't sooth you but disturb you and make you take an action. Atonality in music from Schoenberg to Darmstadt school such as Luigi Nono and more contemporary avant-garde composers have shared similar values.
Emotions are facts can be seen until 30th of April, 2022. Monica Mays will also have many exhibitions coming up!
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