Mónica Mays’s exhibition ‘Bucolic Gang’

Rupert is pleased to invite you to the artist Mónica Mays’ exhibition ‘Bucolic Gang’. The exhbition will run until 18th of October at the Vilnius St. Virgin Maria ‘s Church building (Savičiaus St. 15, Vilnius).

EXHIBITION OPENING HOURS:

Monday-Friday 14.00-18.00
Tuesday closed
Saturday 12.00-18.00
Sunday 13.00-16.00

EXHIBITION GUIDED TOURS:

The 13th of October 18:00 (By Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir) Tour Language: EN
The 16th of October 14:00 (By Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir). Tour Language: EN
The 18th of October 18:00 (By Tautvydas Urbelis). Tour Language: LT

The exhibition is a part of Rupert’s Public Programme ‘Magic and Rituals’ and will present Mays’s new works commissioned by Rupert.

On the 29th of September 2021, the exhibition ‘Bucolic Gang’ was introduced during an online lecture ‘Home’ by Rupert’s guest and philosopher Federico Campagna. Recording of the lecture and discussion.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:

In ‘Bucolic Gang’, Mónica Mays borrows from the potentiality of the neobaroque, in which botanical depictions introduce warped perspectives and the blurring of clearly delineated borders, putting fixed identities into question towards the formulation of yet uncertain ones.

The sculptures presented in the exhibition are an assemblage of elements foraged from around Vilnius: botanical imprints on animal skins, discarded domestic objects, and distorted crosses and baroque engravings from local churches. Their forms play on anamorphosis, which is an optical device employed to visualise warped images that may only be viewed correctly from a specific angle or reflection. These “broken” devices are also presented in the baroque church and a former Soviet storage building—where the exhibition takes place—with a room full of phantom frescos cut in half by a solid concrete floor.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Mónica Mays (ES/US/NL) lives and works between Amsterdam and Madrid.

Her practice revisits craft and cultural memory to investigate forms of cosmological belonging.
Materials with winding, ambulatory histories of global circulation and redistribution intermingle with fabulations, vernacular stories and scavenged objects of the home, creating families of works where praxis, lore and material agencies meet.

She draws on ornamentation in folk and domestic artefacts as forms of tacit and unintelligible speech which pass on the irregular and unspoken histories of their making. Notions of botanical decolonisation, prepatriarchal mythologies and the neobaroque are present in her sculptural and performative work through polyphonic compositions and magical realism.

Mónica studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of New Orleans, received her BFA cum laude from the HEAR / ESADS in 2015 and MA from the Sandberg Instituut in 2017. Previous and forthcoming exhibitions include Willet Holthuysen Museum (Amsterdam), Punt WG (Amsterdam), Dutch Design Week, De Fabriek Eindhoven, Frascati Theater (Amsterdam), Cobra Museum of Modern Art (Amstelveen, the Netherlands), De Nieuwe Regentes Theater (the Hague), Corridor PS (Amsterdam), Amsterdam Open Tuinen Dag; Extra City Kunsthal (Antwerp); COMBO (Venice, Italy); Industra Gallery (Brno, Czech Republic); Chiffonier (Dijon, France); Matadero-Madrid, Centro Centro (Madrid), Palacio Burtrón (Madrid) and Reina Sofia Museum Library (Madrid). She has been tutoring at SNDO, the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam and Rupert’s Alternative Education Program in Vilnius. In the past year she has been awarded Young Sculpture Talent Price C&L, Bilbao Arte Foundation Grant and 3PD-Amsterdam Fonds voor den Kunst.

Exhibition curator: Tautvydas Urbelis
Design: Nerijus Keblys ir Mantas Rimkus (TAKTIKA studio)
Exhibition architect: Artūras Čertovas
Exhibition coordinator: Gabrielė Marija Vasiliauskaitė
Special thanks: Violetta Pilecka, Paulius Lukaitis, Algirdas Ridikas, Vladimiras Šiškovas, Matas Duda, Alex Zamora, Ula Žiobakaitė and Tom K Kemp

Partners: The Embassy of Spain in Lithuania, Bilbao Arte Foundation and Vilnius City Municipality

Rupert’s activities are supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture

All guests are required to have a Covid-19 National Certificate. www.gpasas.lt