Monika Bravo (born 1964) is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Bogotá, Colombia, who lives and works in New York City, New York. Her work has been internationally exhibited, including at Stenersen Museum in Oslo; Seoul's International Biennial of New Media Art; Bank of the RepublicinBogotá; New Museum and El Museo del Barrio in New York City and Site Santa Fe.[1][2] Her work has received acclaim including a 1999 New York Times review which called her piece Synchronicity (from a group exhibition at El Museo del Barrio) a "standout...small, beautifully blurry video images of boats plowing through New York Harbor..."[3]
In 1982, Bravo left Bogotá, moving to Rome to study fashion design, which she continued in Paris at Esmod, before traveling to London to study photography. In 1994 she moved to New York where she is currently still based.[4][5]
On September 10, she spent more than six hours making time-lapse exposures of the boats below, the bridges, and an advancing storm that sent lightning through the night sky, illuminated Tower Two. Around midnight, Bravo gathered her tapes and bid Richards "Good night" as he watched the end of the Giants-Broncos game on Monday Night Football; he had chosen to remain there through morning. Her footage, shown in small venues and on the Internet, would be the last previous glimpse of how those who lived and worked and dreamed in the towers had regarded the city below them.[8]
In 2010, Bravo was one of four winning artists in New York City's "urbancanvas" design competition with her work "Breathing Wall UC".[9]
Most recently Bravo Represented the Vatican City in the Pavilion of the Holy See at the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial with her work "ARCHE-TYPES: The sound of the word is beyond sense". With this new work, she continues with her interest in coding/decoding information, the interest in the language of abstraction and an ongoing pursuit to decipher reality by means of perception. She created a parallel between the prologue of the Gospel of John In the Beginning..., (given to her by the curator of the Pavilion, Micol Forti), Malevich’s ideas behind Suprematism* and the definition of Zaum by the avant garde Poet Aleksei Kruchenykh**.
Among her most recent exhibitions are Waterweavers curated by José Roca and Alejandro Martín, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington DC 2015, Centro Conde Duque, Madrid 2015 and Bard Graduate Center, New York 2014; Theorem. You Simply Destroy the Image I Always Had of Myself curated by Octavio Zaya, MANA Contemporary, Jersey City NJ 2015; Landscape of Belief (solo), Y Gallery, New York 2015; Affective Architectures, Aluna Art Foundation, Miami FL 2014; URUMU (solo), NC-Arte, Bogotá 2014; Common Ground: Earth, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul 2014.
"Breathing_Wall_UC", installation, City Point, Brooklyn[10]
"AN INTERVAL OF TIME_UTA _ COMMISSION", Landmarks Public Art Program, University of Texas at Austin has commissioned a time-based installation for their public art collection[11]
"AKA_H2O, A panoramic video installation of flowing water and nature scenes by artist Monika Bravo, is projected across a 60-foot wall creating a visually stimulating ambiance.[12]
Monika Bravo, Gabriel Cure, Juan Luque (ed.), Gabriel Cure Lemaitre La Arquitectura del Detalle, Two Leaves Editions 2012
Ricardo Cisneros, Between Two Worlds, Two Leaves Editions 2011 (Design by Monika Bravo)
Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, Naomi Ben-Shahar, Monika Bravo, Patty Chang, Site Matters: The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's World Trade Center Artist Residency 1997–2001, LMCC 2004
