Monica Bonvicini's Feminist Intervention at Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie

Monica Bonvicini (Venice, 1965) has transformed the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin with a feminist intervention that challenges the male-dominated legacy of modernist architecture. Her exhibition "I do you" features a giant mirrored wall bearing the phrase "I do you," obscuring the entrance and disrupting the transparent volume of Mies van der Rohe's iconic building. Inside, she installed "Upper floor" (2022), a raised platform with a staircase that splits the space, and "SCALE OF THINGS (to come)" (2010). The floor is covered with a carpet printed with her discarded trousers, titled "Breach of decor" (2020-22), symbolizing patriarchal attire and female emancipation. The exhibition also includes chain swings ("Chainswings Belt" and "Chainswings Lether Round," 2022) referencing Berlin's club scene, intertwined neon tubes, and a sound installation "Retrospective" (2022) listing her works from the past thirty years. Visitors can wear dangling handcuffs ("You to me," 2022) for a mandatory thirty minutes, engaging in a fetishistic act of submission. Curated by Joachim Jäger and Irina Hiebert Grun, the show also presents earlier work "2 Tonnen Alte Nationalgalerie" (1998), a pile of rubble from the Alte Nationalgalerie's facade renovation. Bonvicini's intervention appropriates and critiques the theoretical framework of modernism, with the title "I do you" suggesting both reconstruction and desire from a gender perspective. The exhibition runs until April 30, 2023.