Monika Sosnowska facts for kids

Monika Sosnowska was born on May 7, 1972, in Ryki, Poland. She is a famous Polish artist who creates special art called installation art. In 2003, she won two important awards: the Bâloise Prize and the Polityka's Passport award. These awards showed that her art was very important and recognized.

Life and Career of Monika Sosnowska

Monika Sosnowska studied art at the University of Fine Arts in Poznań from 1993 to 1998. Later, she continued her studies in Amsterdam at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten from 1999 to 2000.

From Painting to Space Art

During her last years at the Poznań academy, Monika realized that her paintings were "escaping her canvas." This meant she wanted to do more than just paint on a flat surface. She started making art that mixed two-dimensional (flat) painting with three-dimensional space (like sculptures).

Eventually, she stopped using canvas completely. Instead, she began to use the space around her as a kind of three-dimensional painting.

Using Space as a Medium

Monika Sosnowska thinks of space as a material for her artworks. She always designs her projects to fit into a specific place. Often, she changes existing buildings or rooms. She turns a physical space into a mental space. This plays with how people see and understand things.

She once explained that she is interested in moments when a building's space starts to feel like a mental space. In 2004, she received a scholarship from the Ernst Schering Foundation. In 2012, she was nominated for the Hugo Boss Prize, another important art award.

Today, Monika Sosnowska lives in Warsaw, Poland.

Monika Sosnowska's Key Artworks

Monika Sosnowska – Krata (Grate), 2009. This artwork was placed at the entrance to the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.

Monika Sosnowska has created many interesting artworks around the world. Here are some of her most well-known pieces.

The Corridor (2003)

In 2003, Monika took part in the 50th Venice Biennale, a big art exhibition. She created an artwork called "The Corridor" for the "Clandestine" exhibition. This piece was an "architectural intervention." This means she changed a part of the building itself.

Her corridor looked like it stretched very far away. But it was actually an optical illusion. When you walked into it, the space became narrower and lower. This made it impossible to reach the doors at the end while standing upright.

Monika Sosnowska – Krata, 2009. This artwork shows a bent metal grate.

1:1 (2007)

In 2007, Monika Sosnowska represented Poland at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Her artwork, "1:1," was a bent piece of modern architecture. She crammed it into the Polonia Pavilion, a building from the 1930s.

Monika wrote that it should look like two buildings were built in the same space. They had to "live in symbiosis," which means living together closely. Or, she said, they were "to fight, or rather to wrestle with each other." Her goal was to create a surreal and impossible situation.

Other Important Exhibitions

Monika Sosnowska has had many other major international exhibitions.

• In 2006, she had a solo show at New York City's Museum of Modern Art. For this show, she used the existing space to create a three-dimensional sculpture with geometric shapes.
• In 2007, she created "Loop" at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein. This was an architectural artwork that looked like a Möbius strip. A Möbius strip is a shape that has only one side.
• In 2008, she had an exhibition called "Monika Sosnowska, Andrea Zittel. 1:1" at Schaulager, Basel.
• She also created "Untitled" for K21 Ständehaus, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. This artwork was inspired by the museum's unique architecture and history.

See also

In Spanish: Monika Sosnowska para niños

• Art of Poland
• List of Poles
• Magdalena Abakanowicz