"POWER JOY HUMOR RESISTANCE" 2021

Monica Bonvicini

Light installation by the internationally renowned artist and winner of the Bremen Roland Prize for art in public space

Since the end of April the neon work by the renowned artist Monica Bonvicini has been glowing on the facade of the Weserburg. The work entitled POWER JOY HUMOR RESISTANCE was acquired for the city of Bremen by the Stiftung Bremer Bildhauerpreis / Rolandpreis für Kunst im öffentlichen Raum with financial support from the Senator for Culture and the Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation and is a on permanent loan to the museum.

The work is composed of red neon letters attached to an aluminum frame and measures around 330 cm in height. It highlights important aspects of Monica Bonvicini’s approach: critical inquiries into the power of language, an interest in industrial materials, the unflinching questioning of structures and the entanglement of text and space. The artist often dismantles literary quotations and playfully reassembles them to recharge words, material, and architecture alike. In POWER JOY HUMOR RESISTANCE Bonvicini reflects on words from the book Rage Becomes Her (2018) by american journalist and women’s rights activist Soraya Chemaly to cast a message of hope, action and revolution far into the surrounding landscape.

“POWER JOY HUMOR RESISTANCE: shining now into the distance from the facade of the Weserburg is a message and an invitation at the same time. Monica Bonvicini’s neon work makes a strong statement in a vivid font. Resistance is combined here with joy, humor and strength / power. A museum for contemporary art and an open society could not ask for a better ‘heading’! The work is not only a great asset for the museum, but also for the city’s public space,” says Janneke de Vries, director of the Weserburg Museum for Modern Art.

Monica Bonvicini is the winner of the Rolandpreis für Kunst im öffentlichen Raum 2012. The prize has been awarded every three years since 1989 to artists who open up new fields of thought and action for art in public space. It is awarded by the Stiftung Bremer Bildhauerpreis on the proposal of an interregional panel of art experts.

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