8 Questions with Monica Sousa - Magazine Issue02

Monica Sousa is a selected and featured artist in Al-Tiba9 magazine ISSUE02, interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj about her photographic project (Des)fragmentaçao, Descampado.

Monica Sousa’s art focuses on spaces that emerge from late capitalism, even though sometimes, there is a movement of nature that re-colonized this same place that was intervened by human hands, an entropy that originates the organic development of nature.

Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

My artwork mostly consists of showing people what is wrong with society, with what surrounds us. By this, I mean that my photographs always have an ironic side to them because even though I want to give them a more serious connotation I also want to give them a playful touch. Photography is my way of communicating and stating that something is wrong even though we cannot see what it is at first sight because it has become so common nowadays. “Fragmentação do Habitat” talks about it.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

I always knew that I wanted to be an artist: In high school, my field of study was Visual Arts and I was really undecided between drawing or photography, but then, photography spoke louder. I got my degree in Photography and this year I finished the first year of the Master's Degree in Aesthetics and Art Studies - Photography and Cinema. Besides that, I still have a passion for drawing and when I have free time I do some stuff.

Your photographic project starts with the inspiration of the concept of non-places, described by the French anthropologist Marc Augé. Could you describe this concept and what inspired your artistic expression?

Over the last decades, we have witnessed a great evolution in the most diverse areas, essentially in technology, and society itself has been changing and being manipulated without having this notion. This obsession with space then corresponds to a time when the world is “experienced." Marc Augé describes a non-place as a “place” where people are just passing by. In other words, it is a place constructed and idealized by human beings, where we can do everything in a short time. The intersection between industry and social transformation has led to a stylization of the banal and an objective culture of consumption that has transformed the relationship between humans and ourselves, making us more and more the product of this culture. This is a contemporary subject that we do not think much about, because, as I said before, it is so common that we do not realize what is happening. So, this artwork serves to show society what we cannot see as if it were a mirror.

Architecture represents a human hand’s intervention on nature. In your work, we can see some contemporary geometrical plans that have been imposed by architects and in the case of “Descampado#1” dominate the space, while in others, like “Descampado#2” and “Focus” nature imposes its curves and regenerates the invaded space. Could you talk about this reversed relation between architecture and natural development? How do you relate this to the entropy described previously?

Once nature is altered, it recomposes itself, causing an entropy effect, this means that there is an advance of the territory itself. In “Focus”, in fact, nature had been completely destroyed. The photograph is captured in a quarry and we have no trace of nature there. Human beings destroy a landscape to obtain resources when nature itself provides them. There remains a landscape that gravitates between a distant past and a potentially catastrophic present.

Where did you get your imagery from (What, If any, Sources did you use)?

My images come from my biggest inspirations: nature and music, and possibly everything around us. All our senses leave us memories, even if only subconsciously, and I think that many of the ideas emerge from these memories and daily absorptions. In this work, I used the idea of nature and its relation to architecture, or rather, the nature of the human being without any consent. Sometimes we just think of ourselves and what is beneficial to us, leaving behind what really shifts back.

What current project are you working on?

I am currently working on a project called "fragmented perception" that consists of the very idea of playing, ironically, with the manipulation of modern times and fake reality. Photography has always been referred to as a factual document, but can we believe in everything that we see?

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

In the last months, I had a few collective exhibitions in Lisbon to show other recent works that I have done. Now I regularly show my portfolio and participate in contests that could open more doors to the art world.

What advice would you give someone looking to pursue a career in conceptual photography today?

It is really difficult to survive just as a photographer or in any other type of art, at least in Portugal. To have a career in conceptual photography we must do continuous work and not give up once we take the first NO, in a contest or in a gallery. We have to know how to accept criticism so that we can improve our work and it is very important to have support from other artists, mainly from former teachers. It is they who often give us the strength to create, not letting us stop believing in our work.