Born 1972 in Ryki, Poland
Lives and works in Warsaw, Poland
Monika Sosnowska is a sculptor best known for her large, site-specific architectural installations created by appropriating and manipulating construction materials such as steel beams, concrete, rods and pipes. She creates impactful and elegant sculptures with playful elements that challenge the perception of the viewer. Sosnowska can be regarded not only as a sculptor but also as a designer of space, as her architectonic sculptures are designed and realised for specific sites and occasions. This specificity and impermanence are integral to her work.
Sosnowska is also interested in the interplay of architectural and mental space and the experience of spatial sensations, exploring this in a formally minimalist and conceptual sculptural language. Through this, she makes reference to and comments on modernism and its utopian ideals, specifically its architectural implementation and effect in her native Poland and surrounding Eastern European countries. She distorts and reassembles architectural materials, divorcing them from their former functionality to contradict the rational paradigm of modernism, and to create as a result beautiful visual puzzles and optical illusions.
Sosnowska has shown extensively over the last two decades, with major solo exhibitions at EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finnland (2024), Zentrum Paul Klee, Berlin (2023); Kunstraum Dornbirn (2022); Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2020); Saarlandmuseum Moderne Galerie, Saarbrücken (2020); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2020); The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2019); Muzeum Susch, Engadin, Switzerland (2017); Ginza Maison Hermès, Tokyo (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2015); Australian Center for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne (2013); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2010); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006). Her group exhibitions include Hayward Gallery, London (2018); Tate Modern, London (2017); Sprengel Museum Hannover (2015); Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, (2014); The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2012); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010) and many more. In 2007, Sosnowska represented Poland at the 52nd Venice Biennial.