Name: Monika Dahlberg
Born: The Netherlands, 1975
ARTZUID edition(s): ARTZUID 2023
About Monika Dahlberg
Monika Dahlberg studied from 1997 to 2001 at the Academy Minerva in Groningen. She was born in Kericho in Kenya and has been living in the Netherlands since 1978. Her parents belong to the Kipsigiss tribe. Dahlberg’s versatile oeuvre consists of sculptures, installations, collages, photographs, and texts. Her work focuses on social, aesthetic, and political criticism. Her artistry also includes her activities on social media where, in addition to ‘found’ photos and texts, she also posts her own photos, including many selfies that she prefers to call auto photos.
Dahlberg links her own life experience to elements from popular culture, but also to wider references from art and cultural-historical traditions. As a result, she has developed her own visual language that emerges in both her photo collages and her sculptures. A striking and often recurring element are Mickey Mouse ears. These shapes are reminiscent of a traditional African hairstyle on the one hand, but at the same time depict the Disneyfication of contemporary society. She has given her sculptures a new life by painting them white and adding black ears.
These forms also return in her sculpture So_What, designed for ARTZUID. With this totem, a five-headed gatekeeper, Dahlberg returns to her roots. The sculpture stands for zest for life, freedom, it loves the good life, is curious and constantly looking for knowledge in all directions. It evokes the memory of worship sculptures made by ancestors, works that were intended to offer protection. In her sculpture she has not literally taken over the African woodcarving with which she grew up, but she alternatively works with styrofoam and polyester. Yet in the treatment and texture of her work, angular shapes give the sculpture the appearance of rough woodworking.