VIENNA.- The exhibition I CANNOT HIDE MY ANGER explores the architecture and exhibition history of the Belvedere 21. The space-consuming installation is a radical intervention that raises controversial questions about society.

In the center of the space, Bonvicini has installed a massive cubical structure that gives the exhibition its title. I Cannot Hide My Anger comprises 112 aluminum sheets that surround the inside of the exhibition space (over 1,600 m³) and make it inaccessible to visitors. The empty center thus becomes a negative space.

In her site-specific installations Monica Bonvicini explores the psychology of space and institutional critique. In the process she radically lays bare familiar narratives in art history and other cultural areas, calling into question outdated social perceptions. Since the mid-1990s the artist has been investigating political, social, and institutional conditions and their impact both on society and on the conditions of artistic production. At the heart of her work we find subjects such as architecture, gender roles, control mechanisms, and dispositifs of power, as well as how these behave in relation to one another. Bonvicini works across media with installation, sculpture, drawing, video, and photography. In her artistic practice she is considered direct, merciless, and political.

Her characteristic dry humor is demonstrated in the very first work that the visitors to the Belvedere 21 see when they approach the cubical structure: Hy$teria is a piece that explicitly uses language as a material, critically reflecting on and questioning it. With a single word and by merely replacing the “s” with a dollar sign, Bonvicini opens up a vast discursive and political space and alludes to the frenzied state of the art market and consumer society in general.

Black-and-white drawings like Wildfire Kern 2010 analyze the connection between global warming and natural catastrophes. The pictures show houses left in ruins after fires or hurricanes. These works are particularly relevant in the face of the regressive politics, denial tactics, and ignorance demonstrated by some national governments. Individual social tragedies are depicted against a backdrop of global political decisions.

The print Marlboro Man reflects on the romantic and stereotypical male figure of the strong, freedomloving cowboy. Is this figure an icon of the past or has the Trump era brought back this ideal of masculinity? Bonvicini portrays the cowboy near barbed wire, thereby combining this reactionary male stereotype with similarly resurrected right-wing ideologies that are driving geopolitical divisions by building walls and borders. This subject is also referenced by the walls of the aluminum cube I Cannot Hide My Anger.

The sculpture Double Trouble approaches the subject more poetically. It is a metal bunk bed in which the mattresses have been replaced by three mirrors and a leather belt. Often found in refugee camps and other transitional shelters, this kind of furniture is thus robbed of its restful function and no longer offers any privacy. In Bonvicini’s work this simple design object becomes a symbol of social injustice and discrimination.

The choice of materials plays a significant role in this exhibition. Like the mirrors in Double Trouble, the aluminum walls of I Cannot Hide My Anger also have a reflective property: they generate distorted, fragmented, and unpredictable reflections of the artworks and the visitors. The current selfie trend is thwarted: on the surfaces the audience finds only vague similarities with their shadows alongside atmospheric displaced light and color that resemble a vehicle racing down a highway in Los Angeles at night.

“Every exhibition by Monica Bonvicini is simultaneously an intellectual and physical experience. The artist redesigns spaces and confronts her audience with a constructed environment that makes it possible to come face to face with spatial planning and power structures. As a result she succeeds in exposing and questioning the legitimacy of narratives that have developed over time but that are perceived as natural,” according to the CEO Stella Rollig.

“I CANNOT HIDE MY ANGER is a political exhibition that has come at just the right time. With anger and dry humor Monica Bonvicini reveals not only male-dominated power structures but also the consequences of our capitalist lifestyle—like climate crisis, migration, and the violence of (national) borders,” adds the curator Axel Köhne.