Mónika Üveges: The Anthropocene as a Geological Dividing Line

Visual artist Mónika Üveges graduated as a painter at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2019. Formerly she attended the Vocational School for Fine and Applied Arts, where she studied photography. Her works explore the passages between painting, sculpture and photography, as she extends the traditional formats of the painting by creating relief-like, physical objects. She regularly uses materials found in nature, making her own stretchers, for instance, from driftwood. We now present three of her series, whose concepts are related: made between 2018–2020, Membrane, Hyperobject and Romantism Negru objectify different experiences of the complex relationship between man and nature. Her works characteristically look both natural and artificial, resemble foreign bodies.

“For some time now I’ve been interested in the Anthropocene as a geological dividing line, a series of disappearances and catastrophes caused by the harmful energies released by humans, which places everything and everyone at a crossroads. The symbiosis, alienation and metamorphosis of man and nature are represented in my works by material processes and interactions. I explore this idea with my series. In Romantism Negru, a series of what look like fossils, impermanent nature appears in a romantic fashion, thanks in part to the ephemeral, photo-emulsion-based, analogue photographic method. The multi-viewpoint objects of Hyperobject investigate the dividing line between the natural and the artificial. In Membrane, fragmented human motifs are stuck in a transparent plastic membrane, with the effect as melancholy as it is playful.”