Largest Ever Survey Show Of Legendary American Artist Opens At Haus Der Kunst In Munich

Haus der Kunst, Munich, has unveiled the most comprehensive survey ever of the work of legendary American artist Meredith Monk (b.1942, New York City) in the major retrospective Meredith Monk. Calling opens 10 November 2023 and running until 3 March 2024.

Meredith Monk said: “I work in between the cracks, where the voice starts dancing, where the body starts singing, where theatre becomes cinema.”

Drawing on three years of research, the exhibition at Haus der Kunst is the first in Europe dedicated to Monk's immersive work, presenting her oeuvre as multi-sensorial, innovative installations, embracing the cross-disciplinary way in which she has worked throughout her career.

Exhibition highlights include reconstructed sections of Monk's studio in ‘The Archive Dream Room', that reveal her creative process. Diverse materials range from unpublished compositions, photographs, drawings, posters, film footage, objects and costumes, retracing the various stages of her career and the wider artistic network in which she has moved, starting in New York in the 1960s.

While Monk's early site-specific works are carefully restaged in the form of ‘Time Capsules' her immersive environments, defined by the artist as ‘Shrines', are presented in a thought-provoking manner that push the conventions of exhibition-making. The gallery dedicated to ‘Shrines and Other Offerings' features her newly created installation Songs of Ascension Shrine (2023), a three-channel audio-video installation developed from a collaboration with the artist Ann Hamilton; and Rotation Shrine (2021), an audio-video installation which the artist refers to as connecting tissue for Indra's Net, the third and final work in a trilogy dedicated to our relationship with the natural world, following On Behalf of Nature (2013) and Cellular Songs (2018).

A new book, Meredith Monk. Calling, will be published in January 2024, presenting this first comprehensive career survey encompassing in-depth analysis of the genre-defying work. Featuring never-before-published archival material, musical notations, drawings, and photographs, as well as an interview with the artist, and accompanying essays, the book will affirm Monk's continuing relevance and influence on a new generation. Edited by Anna Schneider with contributions by Hilton Als, Siri Engberg, Andrea Lissoni, Bonnie Marranca, Rick Moody, Timothy Morton, Teresa Retzer, Beatrix Ruf, Adam Shatz, Louise Steinman and others.

Meredith Monk – The Recordings, a 13-CD limited box set edition is issued by Munich-based ECM Recordings compiling all Meredith Monk's releases on the label since Dolmen Music in 1981. The box includes a 300 page book reprising all the original liner notes, as well as new texts and interviews.

Curated at Haus der Kunst by Anna Schneider with Teresa Retzer, exhibition architecture by the Milan based interdisciplinary agency 2050+.

This first survey on the oeuvre of Meredith Monk is a collaboration in two acts at Haus der Kunst in Munich and Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, together with the Hartwig Art Foundation. The exhibition has been developed in close collaboration with Meredith Monk and The House Foundation for the Arts.

To post a comment, you must register and login.