Kunsthaus Zürich presents the fascinating world of Monster Chetwynd - Welcome to 'The Trompe l’oeil Cleavage'
The Kunsthaus Zürich is presenting a comprehensive exhibition by the internationally renowned artist Monster Chetwynd until August 31, 2025.
Titled "The Trompe l'oeil Cleavage," the show combines works from 25 years with new projects and offers a deep insight into the work of the artist, who in 2012 became the first performance artist to be nominated for the Turner Prize. Parallel to this, she is developing a participatory installation at the Tate Modern in London in the summer of 2025. At the Kunsthaus, visitors wander through oversized heads reminiscent of theater sets, bringing their wonderful world closer to them with allusions to antiquity and contemporary art.
Monster Chetwynd (*1973, UK) has lived in Zurich since 2020. Her work combines performance, sculpture, and painting with echoes of medieval mystery plays, art history, and pop culture. This has resulted in a humorous visual language. At the Kunsthaus Zürich, she has designed a specially staged exhibition space inspired by the Via Appia near Rome. On display will be sculptures, photographs, performance documentaries, and paintings from her 'Bat Opera' series, in which she combines bats with art historical references. A highlight will be the premiere of the complete 'Hermitos Children' film series. The films combine surreal humor with social themes such as gender, identity, and power structures.
Her interdisciplinary approach is based on the method of bricolage: she recombines cultural elements and questions social conventions with humor, improvisation, and a distinctive visual language. She weaves together influences from high and pop culture – from Giotto's frescoes to heavy metal music and Cousin Itt from The Addams Family – and thus develops her own aesthetic language. Chetwynd: "I feel drawn to surrealism, nonsense, and irreverence, as though they would reflect my reality… I think of my performances as exploded paintings".
Since 2018, she has been using the name "Monster," a deliberate break with conventional artistic identities. Her work is as radical as it is playful, making the exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich a special event—also due to her close connection to her adopted home of Zurich.
More information kunsthaus.ch
CREDITS
Location Kunsthaus Zürich
Photographer Franca Candrian, Kunsthaus Zürich, © Monster Chetwynd
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