MED "Miedo Existencial Democrático"
(Democratic Existential Fear) - 4
2004
from a series of 10 drawings
pencil and watercolour on paper
courtesy of the artist

MÓNICA GIRON Argentina
Auckland Art Gallery - NEW Gallery

Nine years ago, in the very beautiful Palermo Park, purple covered by blossoming Jacarandas, I attended my first Taoist class, in the heart of Buenos Aires. During the class, the instructor announced, and to my great astonishment, that by training Tai-Chi we could develop flexibility and enjoy a happy longevity. I had never really thought about longevity, just simply because living itself seemed to me so complicated or difficult to understand. The simple presentation of the instructor got me totally perplexed, and projected me into a long investigation. Some years after, while attending a silence and meditation seminar in the southern Andean Patagonia, the Buddhist Tibetan Lama directing the seminar was addressed by one of the attendants (who wrote his question on a slip of paper) about the eventual possibility of doing some kind of meditation for a person going through the stage of a fast and lethal fall. Through the thick isolating windows, we had the view of sunshine pouring over the snowed mountain tops and of natural forests shaking with the wind.

I did the MED drawings in 2004, shortly after the Atocha Bombing in Madrid. They are in a way a commentary on the possibility we may have in contemporary life to disappear physically, instantly and quite totally, without having time to prepare.

- Mónica Giron, September 2006

Background

Born in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina in 1959, Mónica Giron lives and works in Buenos Aires. She has been exhibiting as an artist since the early 1980s. Recent solo exhibitions include Nacer igual, Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, 2002; MED & Obrador, Galería CuartoNivel, Bogotá, Colombia, 2004; and Intellectual Osmosis and Reconciliation, Galería David Pérez-Mac Collum, Guayaquil, Ecuador, 2006. Group exhibitions include Dibujistica, Espacio Urbano, Buenos Aires, 2003; Inaugural exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario, 2004; Futuribles, ARCO 2004, Madrid; Escultura-Objeto: Relecturas en la colección del MAMBA, Modern Art Museum Buenos Aires (MAMBA), 2005; Double vision: Prague Biennale, 2005; Öppet hus (Open house), International Artists Studio Program, Stockholm, 2005; Memoria en construccíon and Marco en Recoleta, both Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, 2006. In recent years, Giron has held visiting artist roles at various institutions in Sweden and Norway and in 2005 was a participant in the International Artists Studio Program, Stockholm. Throughout her career she has been active as a teacher and writer. A self-titled publication on Giron's work by P Cohornen was published in 2006 by Galería David Pérez-Mac Collum.