Monica Mays
Spain/VISUAL ARTS/
Monica Mays’ work consists of sculptures, performances and archival images. She has a rejected background in cultural anthropology that informs her practice, enmeshing biography, historical archive and mythology. Their pieces often take the shape of animated domestic objects that are spilling over, optically distorted or in the process of transmutation, considering materials and objects through their production and reproduction under consumer systems of production and exchange. She is interested in the potential of excessiveness, ornamentation and exuberance as spaces where states of in-betweenness and opacity of meaning can exist.
PRESENTING
Anamorphosis is an optical illusion made for visualizing obscured images from one single point of view or reflection from the 15th-16thC. They are a byproduct of linear perspective techniques of the period, using geometry and lens-based techniques to distort and encode images rather than clarify them.
In the service of realism, linear perspective renders the world from a singular point in space. However, this is only truly accurate if parallel lines are always straight and right angles exact. As this is not the case, the spread of linear perspective produces a violent and intricate deformation of the shape of things - a human-centred, increasingly familiar ‘optimization’ of reality, where the world is reconfigured from a single point of view as a resource for human projects.
In this context, anamorphosis, often used as a parlour trick or puzzle, is a tamed, domesticated version of pre-perspectival disorientation; an indecipherable image with no frame of reference - until one stands at exactly the correct, singular vantage point and the abstract wilderness resolves into figuration. “Open me, close me” breaks these anamorphic images by overlapping their distortions and rendering them unreadable from any single objectivity.
Stimulating and facilitating top talent with affordable living and working space, a budget, and a network – that is the goal of the 3Package Deal. This successful program of the Amsterdam Fund of the Arts (AFK) and Bureau Broedplaatsen in collaboration with renowned Amsterdam institutions is now regarded as the best practice in the field of talent development.
The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) invests in the arts which enrich the experience of life in the city of Amsterdam. The AFK encourages the quality, dynamism and diversity of the arts in Amsterdam, and contributes to the city's strong and richly varied cultural climate. The fund is available to all disciplines within the cultural sector, for cultural organizations and artists. The AFK supports both experimentation and proven quality, established organizations and those that are relatively new, the professional arts and amateur arts - from every district of the city. As a metropolitan cultural fund, the AFK offers support to high-quality cultural activities, it functions as a booster for the arts within the city and is an investor in a sustainable future for the cultural sector.
Bureau Broedplaatsen is part of the municipality of Amsterdam. Its task is to realize more affordable studios and (residential) workspaces for artists and incubator groups. Bureau Broedplaatsen does this in collaboration with target group organisations, city districts, central services, corporations, real estate agents, developers, and banks.
We thank our partners, the renowned Amsterdam cultural institutions listed below who take part in the 15 coalitions that select the participating artists and provide them with guidance and a supportive network. They are of vital importance to the program.
Film and Interactive Media: Filmacademie / IDFA / EYE / Fashion: HTNK / OSCAM / AMFI Visual Art: FOAM / Rietveld Academie / De Appel Arts Centre / Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam / Kunstverein / Rijksakademie / Engaged Art: Veem House of Performance / De Balie / De Ateliers / Urban Realm: NDSM-Werf / Over het IJ Festival / Das Arts (AHK) / Theatre: Academie voor Theater en Dans/ Amerpodia / Theater Bellevue / Dance: ICK Artist Space / Frascati Theater / AHK / SNDO (AHK Dans) / Music: Conservatorium Amsterdam / Muziekgebouw aan het IJ / Melkweg / Cabaret: Academie voor Theater en Dans / De Kleine Komedie / Amsterdams Kleinkunst Festival / Interhistoricity: Oude Kerk / Museum van Loon / H401 / Reinwardt Academie / Publishing Performance: Werkplaats Typografie (ArtEz) / If I Can’t Dance / Sandberg Instituut – Critical Studies / Social Design: Waag / Hackers&Designers / Framer Framed / Self-taught: Likeminds / Theater Bellevue / Theater De Meervaart / Bio Art and Design: Waag / Mediamatic/ VU Amsterdam
Event credits:
Curated by Bogomir Doringer.Event production by Rafael Kozdron.
Felix Meritis production by Rivka van der Berg.
Press contact: Charlie Thole (AFK.
Project leaders: Johanna Brils (AFK) and Naïma Bouchtaoui (Bureau Broedplaatsen).