ESSEN.- With Diamonds Against Stones, Museum Folkwang is hosting the first solo exhibition in Germany to focus on the work of the Estonian artist Marge Monko (born 1976). In her photographic and installation works, Monko uncovers the complex relationships between art and design. To do so, she utilises the seductive promotional imagery of the luxury goods industry from recent decades. Through the act of re-photographing and re-contextualising, Monko transforms practices from commercial photography into artistic statements informed by feminist and psychoanalytical perspectives. Monko occupies the space of the museum with around 30 photographic works and videos. In addition to the works in the museum space, Monko is also producing an installation entitled Today’s Woman at Berliner Platz in Essen.

In her current group of works, Women of the World, Raise Your Right Hand, Monko applies a feminist viewpoint to examine the advertising campaign launched by the De Beers diamond company in the early 2000s, when it set its sights on independent, self-reliant women as a new target group. De Beers had indelibly burnt itself into the collective consciousness with adroit marketing and clever product placement in 1940s Hollywood productions.

Importantly, the artist’s Estonian background gives her a heightened sensitivity to social norms and systems. The early years of her life spent in the Soviet Union, the major political and economic upheavals that happened in the context of Estonian independence in 1991, the post-Soviet reality next to its huge neighbour Russia, and its present-day position as a shining example of digitization within Europe: all these phases and experiences seem to find a place in Monko’s work, be it in the form of photograms of packs of stockings, glossy advertising claims from the 1980s, or militant quotes from the labour movement, which she collages with historical photos of a stocking factory. Monko’s self-enactment I Don’t Eat Flowers is a representation of the confident self-definition of a generation of women who no longer have to fight for equality and recognition, but are able to experience them in their everyday lives.

Funded by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Estonian Ministry of Culture and STEBU Gerüstbau, Essen.