:

Generational Weight

Exhibition Vernissage

Exhibition duration: 6. 9. 2021 – 29. 10. 2021
Vernissage 6.9. 2021, 18-22h


3G Ruling
For inquiries please contact:

www.monicaclocascio.com
www.minusoffspace.com


Monica C. LoCascio’s show Generational Weight addresses
transmission beyond the explicit. Working with
textiles, she rediscovers ancestral desires, inclinations,
pleasures and techniques that often link her back to
a family heritage which she didn’t know existed. Convinced
that there are inherited and embodied memories,
experiences that are transmitted through bodies,
DNA as well as language, she creates fabrics that metaphorically
refer to transmission while often also using
methods she either inherited or even explicitly learned
from her ancestors.

Studying in the Art&Science MA program at the University
of Applied Arts in Vienna, she started researching
somatic therapies, epigenetics, the relationship between
the body and the mind and theoretical concepts
of time and molecular geometries, among others. A part
of her theoretical research is aimed at gaining a practical
understanding of the workings of intuition and implicit
forms of knowledge.

Time is an important theme in many of her pieces. Time
spent in the repetitive movement of crocheting – a technique
taught to her by her grandfather’s twin sister – or
the time needed to grow a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria
and Yeast (SCOBY) become integral parts of her creations
that work like powerful metaphors of phenomena
which lack representation, such as trauma, an essential
subject of LoCascio’s recent works.

Nourishing the SCOBY, a being of a completely foreign
kind in order for it to grow into a material she can work
with, has become an important part of LoCascio’s art
over the last year. Looking for more significant materials
to work with, she had been struck by the materiality of
the SCOBY growing on a jar of kombucha in her kitchen
during the first lockdown in Vienna: Her training in art and
science and her intuition seemed to come together in a
flash and she decided to experiment with this new matter
as a biologically generative alternative to industrial or
extractive materials.

For trained eyes, certain SCOBYs then tell the story of
their genesis from a first “mother SCOBY” to her grandchildren,
thereby evoking themes that are important
to the artist. In this process, the material is often torn,
scarred and heals, just like bodies or minds that go
through traumatic experiences. Major themes like transmission,
trauma and healing are here addressed on multiple
levels while the artist uses techniques like embroi-
Minuszswei, Domgasse 6, 1010 Wien | Minusoffspace.com
dery, which were traditionally associated with women
and often discarded from the realm of high art until the
second half of the 20th century, when artists and theorists
started to claim the artistic relevance of textiles and
the techniques associated with them, an important artistic
heritage of LoCascio’s work.

Rather than following a goal-directed process throughout,
LoCascio usually starts with a hunch and then follows
the lead of her body, always remaining receptive to
serendipity to develop her works. LoCascio’s approach
to serendipity relies strongly on intuition, which the artist
uses more and more systematically, trying to tune into
her body’s reactions as she makes decisions in art and
in life.

Klaus Speidel, August 2021


About

Monica C. LoCascio was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in
1984 and lived in Malaysia and Morocco before moving
to Austria with her family in 2000. She received her BA
with honors in New Media & Visual Arts in 2006 from
Emerson College in Boston, and her MA with honors in
Art&Science from Universität für Angewandte Kunst
in Vienna, Austria. She lives and works in Vienna, and
serves on the Medicine + Media Arts Advisory Board
at UCLA.

Generational Weight
September 06, 2021, 18:00h
Location
Minuszwei, Domgasse 6, 1010 Wien