Artists

Monster Chetwynd

Press release

In a society shaped by rules on the one hand, and conventions on the other, it requires places that subvert everyday norms. Monster Chetwynd creates such spaces through her performances, images, and installations. She plays with masquerades, twists social rituals, diverts energies, creates hybrid beings and juggles visual cultures from the Middle Ages to science fiction. The monstrous, the carnivalesque, and the grotesque are ever-present in her worlds and always associated with exaggeration, absurdity, horror, and humour. However, they are invariably committed to positivity. Monster Chetwynd's art exudes the courage to find honest engagement in the creative act and to stage rehearsal spaces for inclusive alternatives.

The exhibition «Head-Less-Ness» brings together masks, corporeal fragments, bricolage furniture, textile prints and paintings in the Artists' Bar of Cabaret Voltaire. Originally opened in 1916 as the «Künstlerkneipe Voltaire», art and life were to go hand in hand here and expand the concept of art. In this sense, the exhibition can be seen as a collection of theatre props itching to be used, challenging notions of the familiar and beautiful: an oversized bench, chairs too low to sit on, paintings as uncomfortably placed wallpaper, free-standing sculptures on tables, moths, grimacing faces and masks.

In the grotesque-carnivalesque it is always unclear where the body ends and where the world begins. This fits in with the sociotope «bar», which as a closed community space can both level and reverse social connections. Both the carnival and the bar are associated to rituals in which the individual dissolves within the group, their surroundings or conversely retrieves themselves. «Never drink alone» is therefore the name of the drink that accompanies the exhibition and can be drunk amidst the countless props of heads and bodies. A puppet accompanies the cocktail – an opportunity to enter into a «Puppet Slam» with other guests.