MUNTHE ART MONDAY: Marie Munk

Name: Marie Munk
Instagram: @marie__munk og galleriet @untitled___projects
Website: www.mariemunk.dk

Please introduce yourself and what you do.

My name is Marie Munk and I am an interdisciplinary artist, living and working in Copenhagen. I primarily work with sculpture and installation. In my work I am concerned with how technological innovation and productivity both characterize and dominate our environment, our behavior and especially our bodies. I am driven by an eager to create alternative realities that balance the playful, imaginative and adorable with the eerie, disgusting and horrifying. Using silicone as a metaphor for the bodily, I produce abstract hypothetical scenarios, which questions current tendencies in society.

I exhibit both in Denmark and internationally either solo or together with artist Stine Deja. My latest solo show called Cable-to-Cradle just opened at the gallery Untitled Contemporary in Vienna where it will be on show until late November. My latest national solo show was Great Pets, which was on show at Tranen in Hellerup until March this year.  

What advice would you give to emerging female artists entering the art scene?

Work hard. Don’t waste your time on self-doubt. Follow your gut feeling. Be brave. Don’t define yourself by failure or rejections.
It sounds harsh maybe, but starting a career as an artist isn’t easy. You can expect rejection after rejection, but the rejections don’t matter, what matters is the one yes/invitation – that is what will bring you forward.  

What themes do you pursue in your art?

My work usually deals with the relation between the body and technology. I am very inspired by science research, as this is usually where the boundaries of what we believe is possible are pushed. Most inventions and new technologies are developed to improve or solve a current issue, but often comes with a, sometimes, darker commercial backside to it. Technology increasingly enters our lives and bodies, and we tend to follow commercial tendencies without fully considering the long-term consequences, though it is often touching upon the very core of what defines us as humans.

What is your ultimate goal for your artwork?

The present is shrinking. Looking at the graphs of population growth, CO2 emissions, acidification of the oceans, loss of biodiversity, increase in computing power and so on, an exponential pattern emerges, where within the last few decades it draws a steep curve. Everything is changing more and more fast and it is increasingly difficult to keep up. Simultaneously technology is more and more often entering and replacing biological processes from which we humans for thousands of years have defined our existence. With my artwork I wish to establish a pause for thought on our future by confronting visitors with uncanny abstract scenarios. 

How does gender affect your work?

As most of my work is body related I guess it is somehow based on my own experience of my female body. But I prefer to work with the bodily on an abstract level, like a sort of “body clay”, rather than illustrating specific body parts, female or male. My aim is to create no-gender bodies, not judged by being male or female, but relatable by both genders. With my work I wish to discuss our human fleshiness, in an increasingly digital world, on a more holistic level, not (necessarily) defined by gender.

We will publish a new interview with a female artist every Monday. Follow MUNTHE ART MONDAY her.

Marie is wearing our Lost Leather Jacket.