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Mona 1-7,
Sonic automata
Berlin, 2025-26
Electric
powered wood action, steel, polyurethanes,
polyester, polystyrene, and Nylon.
(Head drawing: ink on acrylic).
The Mona
series (7 automata) draws its conceptual
lineage from the long history of mechanical
embodiment—from early automata developed
between the 4th and 19th centuries to the
evolving field of contemporary robotics.
These technologies continue to fall short of
replicating the complexity, and sentience
inherent to organic life. The Mona series is
positioned as a reminder of humanity's
enduring fascination with constructing
life-like forms.
The Mona
series operates as a self-portrait, but
Instead of exploring the hidden recesses of
the mind, the automata reveal an inner
architecture made of mechanisms, circuits,
and imagined systems—an interiority defined
by structure rather than emotion. By
foregrounding technology as the substrate of
identity, the series suggests that our
internal worlds may be shaped as much by
constructed systems as by personal
histories.
The automata
also emerge from long periods of solitude
spent within the dark forests and ecological
reserves of Mexico, Germany, Latvia,
Lithuania, and Poland. Immersion in these
landscapes—often remote, silent, and heavily
wooded—became both a sense of shelter and a
framework for reflection. The quiet,
lightless atmosphere informed the mood and
visual language of the series, endowing the
works with an undercurrent of introspection
and nocturnal stillness. The “Tent
visions series” (hanging on the wall),
are conceived as a "portrait of al
self-portrait"—It embodies the duality that
runs through the entire series: the meeting
point of the technological and the organic,
the fabricated and the experienced, the
internal and the external.
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