Inverted Explosions

2022 -

graphite powder, water, resin, pencil, and dry pigment on rice paper

72 x 39 inches each

photographic documentation by Jean Vong

Artist Statement

Inverted Explosions is an ongoing cycle of large-scale drawings on rice paper. In this cycle of drawings I hope to evoke the moment in which the body becomes a landscape, harboring itself within, yet also allowing the fluidity of transformation, becoming one with the earth. The horizontality of traces relates to the ideas of landscape or territory, while stains of resin, water and graphite powder connote explosion, leakage, and porosity.

- Monika Weiss

Essay Excerpt

In addition to recognizing the qualities of charcoal that adapts to the artist’s needs (its capacity to be held firmly, crushed, its ability to stain, and the symbolic associations), Weiss uses other materials with comparable purpose. Graphite powder for example, when mixed with water has properties similar to ink. The type of paper is also carefully considered. Since about 2005, Weiss has often worked on Japanese rice paper because of its transparency and ability to evoke the surface of skin, allowing her to double the metaphorical connotations when so much of her work revolves around the body.

- Mark McDonald, curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Drawing Consciousness: Monika Weiss in Monika Weiss-Nirbhaya, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2021, pp. 54 - 76 [to read the essay click here]