Monica Piloni: Allegories of Triversity
Monica Piloni
Allegories of Triversity
Opening: November 15, 2024, 18:00 – 21:00
Exhibition: November 16 – November 30, 2024
Curators: Kika Nicolela, Ruizhe Liang
Collaborator: objktcom
Mariannenstrasse 33, 10999 Berlin
Allegories of Triversity marks Monica Piloni’s inaugural exhibition in Berlin. The Brazilian artist, based in Brussels since 2020, presents a diverse series of works spanning various media, with a primary focus on sculpture in physical, virtual, and photographic forms. Through these works—mounted on pedestals or integrated into installations—Piloni explores the coexistence of simultaneous and multiple narratives. Her sustained engagement with reconstructing the human body, particularly through the fragmentation and reassembly of female forms, reimagines figures of monstrosity. Traditionally subjects of mythic fear, these figures are reclaimed and transformed into symbols of counter-mythology.
The exhibition is structured into four acts—Flesh, Floating, Golden, and Standing—each occupying a distinct section of the gallery and drawing on the gestures and materiality of Piloni’s sculptures. The interplay between form and narrative is central to each act.
Among the highlighted works, Mermaid 75% features a fused, dual-faced female figure in a meditative pose. This sculpture embodies the fluid and complex nature of self-identity, evoking questions of perception and inner multiplicity. Within the digital work Fountain, a floating, rotating dancer performs a ballet sequence while her period blood gradually stains her white dress red. The piece addresses themes of femininity, bodily autonomy, and the societal taboos surrounding menstruation, challenging conventional perceptions through a visceral, corporeal allegory. Would You Want My Soul?, a photograph of hyper-realistic body sculptures, depicts a disjointed, elongated female figure sprawled across a sofa. The eerie, distorted anatomy blurs the lines between the familiar and grotesque, challenging viewers’ perceptions of physical and psychological space.
The suspended form in Diver 75% explores the body’s precarious balance between gravity and grace. The piece creates a sense of disorientation, enhancing the tension between weight and buoyancy. Untitled III and Untitled IV, photographic works, portray human-like forms enshrouded in fabric and positioned in domestic environments, suggesting themes of confinement and the uncanny. These scenes resonate with Piloni’s interest in exploring liminal spaces, where figures seem simultaneously rooted and adrift.
The sculpture IdEgoSuperego 20% is a golden mass of intertwined, contorted bodies, encapsulating Piloni’s commentary on psychological and societal struggles. The work juxtaposes desire and chaos, examining how individual identities merge or conflict within collective experiences. Succubus, The End 75% presents a standing, multi-limbed figure, exuding an aura of both strength and surrealism, capturing Piloni’s signature interplay of bodily mutation and empowerment. Finally, Hexa, a sleek black sculpture, depicts an entwined embrace, emphasizing themes of intimacy, entrapment, and physical abstraction. The accompanying video amplifies these motifs, animating forms that oscillate between the alluring and the alien.
Through her work, Piloni navigates themes of materiality and the transcendental, weaving together imaginaries that span from witches and cyborgs to cultural icons. She envisions a post-human world marked by fluidity, transformation, and multiplicity, challenging traditional binaries and celebrating the dynamic complexities of contemporary identity.
Installation views © Galerie Met and Monica Piloni.
Monica Piloni
Monica Piloni was born in Curitiba, Brazil in 1978. She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. She graduated from the Sculpture Course at the School of Music and Fine Arts of Paraná (EMBAP) in 2002. Among her solo shows in Brazil, stand out “Dissident Symmetries”, Sorocaba Contemporary Art Museum (2022), “Humans, All Too Human” (2022) and “Cyclo” (2019), both in Zipper Gallery, São Paulo and “Both Odd”, Laura Marsiaj Gallery, Rio de Janeiro (2013). She participated in group shows in important institutions such as “Sartori Collection – Contemporary art inhabits Antônio Prado”, Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art, Porto Alegre (2022), “Diversity of our Time”, Figueiredo Ferraz Institute, Ribeirão Preto (2017), TRIO Biennial, National Museum of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro (2015), “All Too, Pasolini”, Mário de Andrade Library, São Paulo (2015), “New Brazilian Sculpture”, Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro (2011), “The dreams Collector”, Figueiredo Ferraz Institute, Ribeirão Preto (2011), among others. Her works appear in important public and private Brazilian collections such as Niterói Contemporary Art Museum, Sorocaba Contemporary Art Museum, Figueiredo Ferraz Institute, Cleusa Garfinkel and Bernardo Paz.
When looking at her work as a whole, Piloni’s interest in the representation of the female figure becomes evident, which began as a result of using her own body as a living model. The self-portrait that at first came about for convenience, over time symbolically became a portrait of all women because what she was expressing was a type of collective narrative and, in fact, according to Piloni , art is the greatest promoter of social change. Most of her works have a common feature in their construction and mirroring. This resource distorts the body, creating another dimension in the perception of the human figure, making it as attractive as it is repulsive. She uses several mediums, but mainly sculpture, whether physical, virtual, photographed, animated, mounted on a base or installation, while also exploring different materials such as bronze, marble, ceramics, fiberglass, plastiques and others. In her quest to reconceive the human, these predominantly female figures display the unconventional anatomy of their naked bodies as a peaceful protest to indicate a path towards the emergence of a post-human feminist turn that rejects the idea of the universalist posture of our species as the supposed “measure of all things”, criticizes the notion of human exceptionality, and the hierarchy of species. The reflective or rotational symmetry used as an aesthetic resource in constructing these works creates new versions of bodies that break with the biological constitution and with the bilateral structure of human beings, making them non-functional. Despite being built exclusively with human parts, they can refer to creatures such as demons, mythological characters, or extraterrestrial beings, representing the ability to manifest through different identities and to change perspectives with fluidity.
Works:
