artnexus #30

Priscilla Monge (Costa Rica, 1968) has become one of the most significant figures of contemporary Costa Rican art. The winner of major prizes in her own country, she has also represented Costa Rica at the biennials in Valparaiso, in Central America and the Caribbean, and will also be present at the São Paulo Biennial.

Monge has been exploring, in an unusual way, the role of women and the questions of everyday violence. From her series of works on sports, down to her exquisite embroidered linen works reproducing chilling death sentences, she ironically reflects the exercise of power.

Her proposals take us back to the idea of a woman through an interplay and transposition of objects and functions, modifying the original meanings and discovering new ways of seeing everyday reality. Tasks and features normally associated with women are resources that she uses to tell stories and tales, which are more than just an individual view and invert values and symbols that society traditionally associates with women. The everyday violence exercised, in a variety of different ways, by those who hold power, is combined with a perverse ingenuity that does not waver in its subversion of meanings. And it is precisely this which is one of the most expressive features of her work. 

IVONNE PINI