Monika Bravo was an artist-in-residence at The Santa Fe Art Institute as part of that organization’s Emergency Relief Residency for artists from Lower Manhattan. Previously, she was part of the WORLD VIEWS Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Studio Residency Program at the World Trade Center. For three and a half months, she shared space on the North Tower’s 92^nd floor with 14 other artists. On September 10, 2001, Bravo filmed what she describes as “an unusual thunderstorm” from the windows of her studio. She left that evening with seven hours of time-lapse footage and three inkjet prints. On September 11, 2001, fellow artist-in-residence Michael Richards lost his life in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and the remaining artists lost nearly all their work and equipment.

SITE Santa Fe is pleased to present an exhibition of Monika Bravo’s work titled Playing With Time, which includes five separate works. The exhibition will feature Bravo’s video projection, September 10 2001, Uno Nunca Muere la Vispera (One Never Dies the Day Before), a five-minute document dedicated to artist Michael Richards’ memory. Also included in the exhibition will be Liquify and A_Maze, two interactive DVD installations that will be customized for SITE Santa Fe, and Playing With Time and movingframe/stillframe, two additional video projections.

Monika Bravo manipulates images, materials, and technology in order to create illusions of recognizable landscapes and/or environments that examine the notion of space-time as a measure of reality. The viewer is induced to connect by exploring, interacting, and at times focusing on an object, place or scene in a manner that is both meditative and investigative. Bravo’s is an art of seduction, illusion and introspection where subject and representation exchange and engage in conditions that allow the mind to travel from one reality to the next without the limit of boundaries. Her work seeks to actively engage the viewer as an integral participant in multi-textural art projects that resist the traditionally static state of art housed in museums.

 

Monika Bravo was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1964 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She studied fashion design in Rome and Paris and photography in London and New York. Bravo’s films and video installations have been shown in the U.S. at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Ocularis, Museo del Barrio, Lehman Gallery at Lehman College, Tyler Gallery at Temple University, and DeChiara/Stewart Gallery in New York. She has also exhibited internationally at Ciocca Arte Contemporanea in Milan, Sala RG in Caracas, Museo de las Americas in Puerto Rico, and AboutStudio/AboutCafe in Bangkok.

 

 

SITE Santa Fe’s Projection Room is supported by Sharp Electronics Corporation.