Monika Sosnowska facts for kids

Monika Sosnowska, born on May 7, 1972, in Ryki, Poland, is a famous Polish artist. She creates amazing art installations. In 2003, she won two important awards: the Bâloise Prize and the Paszport Polityki award. These awards showed how talented she was in the art world.

About Monika Sosnowska

Her Artistic Journey

Monika Sosnowska studied art at the University of Fine Arts in Poznań from 1993 to 1998. Later, she continued her studies in Amsterdam from 1999 to 2000. During her time in Poznań, she realized that painting on a flat canvas was not enough for her.

She started making art that mixed two-dimensional (flat) painting with three-dimensional space. Eventually, she stopped using canvases completely. Instead, she began to use the space around her as a kind of three-dimensional painting.

How She Creates Art

Sosnowska sees space as a material for her artworks. She always designs her projects to fit perfectly into a specific place. Often, she changes existing buildings or rooms. She turns physical spaces into mental ones, playing with how people see and feel.

She once explained that she is very interested in moments when a building's space starts to feel like a thought or a feeling. In 2004, she received a scholarship from the Ernst Schering Foundation. In 2012, she was nominated for the Hugo Boss Prize, a major art award. Today, Monika Sosnowska lives in Warsaw, Poland.

Famous Artworks

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

The Corridor (2003)

In 2003, Monika Sosnowska showed her artwork "The Corridor" at the 50th Venice Biennale. This is a very important art exhibition. Her piece was part of an exhibition called "Clandestine."

Sosnowska created an artwork that looked like a real corridor but was also an optical illusion. It seemed to stretch far away. However, when people walked into it, they found 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 how she uses space.

1:1 (2007)

In 2007, Sosnowska represented Poland at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Her artwork, called "1:1," placed a bent piece of modern architecture inside the Polonia Pavilion. This building was built in the 1930s.

Sosnowska wanted it to look like two buildings were trying to fit into the same space. She said they should seem to "fight, or rather to wrestle with each other." Her goal was to create a strange and impossible situation for viewers.

Other Notable Exhibitions

Monika Sosnowska has had many other important international exhibitions.

• In 2006, she had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. There, she used the museum's space to create a large sculpture with geometric shapes.
• In 2007, her artwork "Loop" was shown at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein. This piece was an architectural design that looked like a Möbius strip, a shape with only one side.
• In 2008, she had a joint exhibition called "Monika Sosnowska, Andrea Zittel. 1:1" at Schaulager, Basel.
• Her artwork "Untitled" was displayed at K21 Ständehaus in Düsseldorf, Germany, until April 15, 2012. This piece was a response to the museum's unique architecture and history.

See also

In Spanish: Monika Sosnowska para niños

• Art of Poland
• List of Poles
• Magdalena Abakanowicz