Margo Monko. I don’t know you

Marge Monko
I Don’t Know You, So I Can’t Love You, 2018
Installation, smart assistants software, speakers, pigment prints
Courtesy of the artist

I Don’t Know You, So I Can’t Love You is an installation consisting of sound and photographs. The focal point of the display is a romantic conversation between two “smart” assistant devices (also known as voice assistant devices), the personalised software one can interact with using one’s voice (such as Alexa). Marge Monko ponders on love in the digital age and explores the possibility of forming an emotional bond only through textual or aural interactions. Sociologist Eva Illouz (who alsro wrote the book Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, from whom “Modern Love or Love at the Age of Cold Intimacies” borrowed its subtitle) noted that the internet is shaping our imagination with purely cognitive and linguistic content, whilst traditional romantic imagination was characterised by a mix of reality and imagination based on the body. The sculpturally organised photographs in the installation portray a fragmented body, suggesting the disembodied, virtual experiences of internet use.

Drawing on psychoanalysis, feminism and theories of visual culture, Marge Monko uses photography, video and installation to explore historical as well as current events. Recently, her work has also investigated the discourses of romance and its implications in advertising, commercial displays and the internet.

Biography

Marge Monko lives and works in Tallinn, EE. She studied in the Estonian Academy of Arts and in HISK in Ghent, BE. She currently teaches in the Photography Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts. Monko has had solo exhibitions in Cosar HMT, Düsseldorf, Germany, Folkwang Museum (Essen, DE, 2019) and in mumok (Museum of Modern Art; Vienna, AT, 2013). She has also shown her work at P74 Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2022), Maternar, MUAC, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico (2021), Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art (LV, 2018), Manifesta 9 (Genk, BE, 2012), ParaSite (HK),

Lenbachhaus (Munich, DE), FOMU (Foto Museum; Antwerp, BE), Museum of Art in Łódz (PL), The Glucksman Gallery (Cork, IE), CCA Glasgow (UK) and Bétonsalon, Paris (FR). Her works are in various collections including the Estonian Art Museum (EE), the FRAC Lorrain (FR) and the mumok (Vienna, AT).

https://www.margemonko.com/

 

 

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