24th of July 1998, South Africa.

“Through the Wound: Moving between the real vs the artificial, and the imagined vs the actual; this body of work asks questions surrounding the complexities of the body’s mortal and immortal manifestations.”

Monique’s work uses the spaces that translate to non-places and explores the oscillating between different imagined holding places regarding morality. This body of work moves between the post-mortem operating room as well as travelling through the wounds to the archetypal female cavity. The specific sutures through which the deeply evasive spaces may be reached, is negotiated by considering the fragile and temporal nature of the body as a vessel itself. In questioning how the body can become a vessel to go deeper into the tissue of the world, the idea of spacelessness becomes integral in removing the body from a place of familiarity, to a place of ambiguity.

Furthermore she explores how mortality can create a space of contagion by considering the idea of artificial loss. By overtly drawing on notions of artificial and surgical imagery, the process of grief is expanded on by referring to the ephemeral and immaterial nature of the body. The digital quality of the work also adds to the idea of the artificial or imagined through its existence in an intangible cyberspace.

She sets out to know how the ephemeral digital non-place translates to a physical realm becomes of importance in assessing her work as a whole. Although it displays her work as they exist undisturbed within a digital realm, it also uses a physical form. Comprising of projections, light boxes and printed images, the work takes on new meaning through the process of being brought into the ‘ real’ world, adding another layer to the idea of the real vs the imagined.