N I R B H A Y A

monument | antimonument

stone, fiberglass, water, digital film, sound

approximate sculpture dimensions: 6’ x 17’ x 3’

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Nirbhaya by New York-based, internationally renowned, Polish artist Monika Weiss is a long-term public project consisting of a water-filled stone sculpture resembling an ancient sarcophagus, in which a film is projected onto the water. The project is planned for Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the United Nations in New York (curator Izabela Gola, Polish Cultural Institute in New York) and is currently scheduled to open in 2025 for several months duration. The project is accompanied by electronic sound compositions available online and a sequence of live vocal music performances composed and choreographed by the artist to take place around the sculpture. A permanent sister version of Nirbhaya is planned for the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko.

Resembling an ancient sarcophagus, Nirbhaya honors women of all cultures and times who experience the trauma of rape and torture, and death, including Jyoti Singh, who was raped, tortured and killed at the age of 23 in New Delhi in 2012, and who was posthumously named “Nirbhaya.” The formal inspiration for the Nirbhaya sculpture comes from the long tradition of triumphal arches that embody victorious verticality, presenting wars and colonial invasions as heroic history. In Nirbhaya, Monika Weiss offers a profound critique of the symbolism of the arch by taking on one example, the India Gate—itself a copy of the Arc de Triomphe de l' Étoile in Paris. The artist topples the arch and places it on the ground. She reduces its scale and doubles its form, combining the two versions of the architectural form together to create a sarcophagus-like vessel filled with water.

In the words of the artist, "Nirbhaya is a place of meditation and silence, offering a way to reimagine collective memory and abandon victorious and vertical monumentality in favor of a horizontal and peaceful future of humanity.” The triumphal arch no longer hovers above us. Instead, we look down into the water filling the vessel-sarcophagus, and there we see the projected video image of a female figure covered with a long dress and veil, who seems to be immersed in the water and in the sarcophagus. The figure makes extremely slow gestures of lament and her eyes are closed. The figure is also, like the triumphal arch itself, doubled. The faces continue to gradually change from one woman into another while the doubled female figure also slowly transforms, into another matter, into the bark of a tree. Inspired by the myth of Daphne, who self-transformed into a tree to escape rape, Weiss symbolically represents this metamorphosis in her projection thanks to the film montage, by including abstract drawings made by the artist with graphite powder, resin and water.

Nirbhaya by Monika Weiss is organized in cooperation with New York City Parks, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw, the World Council of Peoples for the United Nations and the Streaming Museum. Nirbhaya is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with support from the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Major support is provided by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Additional support is provided by: New York Foundation for the Arts, Polish Cultural Institute in New York, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis, and Lamar Johnson Collaborative.

Essay Excerpt

“Mesmerizingly slow, soliciting prolonged immobility in enthralled gazing, calling for acute attention to subtle changes in the folds of cloth or movements of the draped body, in performance or filmed, provoking intense engagement with the choreography of poignant gestures of elegant hands winding and unwinding, rising and falling, with its own sonic environment that is neither music nor language, Monika Weiss’ works have long solicited our attention to historical events: forgotten, remembered, not yet mourned, or immemorial, so that we experience their condition affectively through a musically choreographed image of time: time is both her frame and medium. Nirbhaya is a complex project deeply resonant for the present. Inspired by a murderous event in the Indian city of Delhi in 2012, the artist calls us to be a remote, removed, belated but permanent witness to that event. As an artwork, however, Nirbhaya also converses creatively with the visual rhetorics and pathos formulae of European art during the periods of its most intense commitment to imagining life, death, power, desire, violence and ecstasy, fear and sorrow.”

- Griselda Pollock, art historian and cultural analyst of international, postcolonial feminist studies in visual art and visual culture, in Monika Weiss-Nirbhaya, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2021 (click here to read full essay)

US LOCATION

At Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, the Gateway to United Nations in New York, Nirbhaya monument/antimonument is planned for a long-term exhibition and curated by Izabela Gola, Visual Arts and Design Curator, Polish Cultural Institute New York. Nirbhaya is organized in partnership with New York City Parks Department of Art and Antiquities, Polish Cultural Institute New York, Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw, World Council of Peoples for the United Nations, and Streaming Museum. Nirbhaya is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Major support is provided by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Additional support is provided by New York Foundation for the Arts, Polish Cultural Institute New York and Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis. Since 2019, Lamar Johnson Collaborative oversees the technical development of the monument production. Special thanks to Dohyoung Kim.

POLISH LOCATION

Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko will be the permanent location for the monument/antimonument Nirbhaya. In the national Sculpture Park the project will be accompanied by a sound installation located several minutes walking distance from the sculpture. (see more about the sound component below)

FUNDRAISING

Since 2019, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) has generously offered fiscal sponsorship in support of the fundraising campaign for Nirbhaya project internationally.

PUBLICATIONS

In 2021 a bi-lingual (English/Polish) 172-page monograph Monika Weiss - Nirbhaya was published by the Centre for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko with texts by Griselda Pollock, Mark McDonald, Meena Alexander, Kalliopi Minioudaki, Buzz Spector, Eulalia Domanowska, Weronika Elertowska, Katarzyna Falęcka, and Maciej Aleksandrowicz. Editors: Halina Gajewska, Barry Keane. Translation: Izabela Suchan. Book design: Irina Pavlova. Financed with the support of Ministry of Culture of Poland and United States Embassy in Poland. Additional support was provided by Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis.

Ini 2020 The Nirbhaya monument|antimonument was featured in Centerpoint Now, the publication of the World Council of Peoples for the United Nations (WCPUN), produced in collaboration with Streaming Museum, The issue marked 75th anniversary of the United Nations.

The project was featured also in LJC-Reverberation 2020, a yearly magazine published by Lamar Johnson Collaborative, an architecture firm that supports technical development of the project since 2019.

The artist’s own writings on Nirbhaya monument/antimonument appeared in Sculpture today 4 / anti-monument: non-traditional forms of commemoration (2019) edited by Eulalia Domanowska and Marta Smolińska, and in Traces of Sisterhood (TRACTS) published by Akademia Sztuk Pięknych in Warsaw (2022).

For more information about Monika Weiss - Nirbhaya publication and to order a copy, click here.

SYMPOSIUM

In March, April and May 2021, Creative Exchange Lab/Center for Architecture + Design St. Louis [CEL] organized an interdisciplinary symposium, Monument | Anti-Monument, inspired by the work of Polish-American artist Monika Weiss and her public project, monument/antimonument, Nirbhaya. The symposium consisted of six virtual panel discussions, in which humanities scholars, artists, architects, historians, curators and activists debated the role of monuments and commemorative design in shaping cultural identity. Moderated by New York based architect Rick Bell and hosted by CEL director Jasmin Aber, the symposium included Monika Weiss as well as Michael Arad, Lance Jay Brown, Nina Colosi, Chip Crawford, Eulalia Domanowska, Weronika Elertowska, Wendy Evans Joseph, Katarzyna Falęcka, Vanessa Gravenor, Percy Green, Marianne Hirsch, Lynne Jackson, Walter Johnson, David Lelyveld, Mark McDonald, Tyler Meyr, Gwen Moore, Eric Mumford, Verity Platt, Griselda Pollock, Leila Sadat, Kamala Sankaram, Jeffrey Smith, Buzz Spector, Julia Walker, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and James E. Young. To view all panels of the symposium click here.

MOVING IMAGE

Nirbhaya is a vessel filled with water into which moving image is projected. Composed of two different time sequences montaged together, the silent film shows a live size woman wearing black shroud, who seems to be submerged in water, moving very slowly. The moving image shows consistently two women, as if joined by their hips. Thanks to the film montage the figures gradually transform into abstract drawings created by the artist, to later return as woman again. Incorporating resin, graphite powder and water, the artist created the drawings from abstract stains, lines and layers, referring to the myth of Daphne, a nymph who escaped from rape by turning into a tree. The drawings symbolize the moment of the transformation of a living body of a woman into a living body of a tree, and suggest a strong connection between the violence against women and the devastating actions against the natural environment. Film excerpts and film stills from the moving image part of the Nirbhaya monument have been exhibited as part of solo and group exhibitions internationally. Nirbhaya moving image part of the project has been choreographed, directed, filmed and edited by the artist. Movement performers have included Melissa Gollance, Katherine Justelle, Jueun Kang, Eliana Rowe, Alexa Velez and the artist.

SOUND at DAG HAMMARSKJOLD PLAZA, New York

At Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, the silence of the Nirbhaya monument will be accompanied by vocal music composed by the artist and performed by women singers on special days of this outdoor exhibition. Evoking Daphne, the mythological nymph that escaped rape through becoming a tree, their voices mark the moment of transformation into a new life form.  In addition to live vocal performances, the artist’s existing sound composition Metamorphosis (Nirbhaya) will be available to the visitors through a barcode. To hear first five movements of the composition click here.

SOUND at the CENTRE OF POLISH SCULPTURE

Alongside the silent Nirbhaya sculpture, an ambisonic sound installation Metamorphosis will be part of the permanent collection of the Sculpture Park at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. Referring to the story of the mythological nymph Daphne, who, escaping violence, becomes a tree, Monika Weiss uses sound to evoke the moment in which Daphne’s skin hardens turning into tree bark, and her voice becomes the sound of rustling leaves. Viewers will be invited to enter the sound field created by the spectral interaction of sound waves emitted from three sculptural objects.