Marge Monko

We met the artist at her show "Diamonds Against Stones" at the Museum Folkwang for an exclusive interview. We also made a film documentation of her exhibition.

Marge Monko. Diamonds Against Stones (22 February – 5 May 2019) Museum Folkwang Essen

In her photographs and installations, the Estonian artist Marge Monko (born 1976) sheds light on the multi-layered relationships between art and design. Visual promises made in recent decades by ads for luxury goods serve her as a foil. What are the different desires that are evoked and amplified by different visual languages? How do the codes behind them function, if we regard them from feminist and psychoanalytic perspectives? Through the act of re-photographing and re-staging, Marge Monko transforms applied photographic practices into artistic assertions. Besides the space of the museum, which Monko fills with around 30 photographic works and videos, the artist has taken this exhibition as an opportunity to conceive an expansive photographic work to be realised in public.