Untitled (Interference), 2013/2014, archival inkjet print. Courtesy the artist.
Untitled (...), 2013/2014, archival inkjet print. Courtesy the artist.
Monika Sziladi’s photographs often begin as candid snapshots taken at typically homogeneous convention centers, during events such as trade shows, corporate mixers, public relations affairs, and meet-ups of subcultures that were formed—and are operating as a result of—social media. She later collages the images into uncanny digital montages, which conceal their own pictorial construction at first glance. Sziladi’s disorienting compositions examine the increasingly muddled separation between public and private, fact and fiction, particularly the ways in which American corporate culture coerces human behavior and gendered identity through advertising, media imagery, and self-broadcasting. Handheld devices and cameras are recurring characters in these fragmented photographs, becoming unlikely focal points or windows into other spaces.
Monika Sziladi earned an MFA from Yale University School of Art, Photography, New Haven, CT (2010), and while there was awarded the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship. She also received a Maitrîse in Art History and Archaeology from Université Paris IV/Sorbonne, Paris, France (1997). Her work has been recently exhibited at Aperture Gallery, New York, NY (2015), Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM (2015), Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2014), Bosi Contemporary, New York, NY (2014), and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA (2010). She has been awarded Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency (2014–2015), Center Awards, Curator's Choice (2015), Humble Arts Foundation New Photography Grant (2012), Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program and Fellowship (2012-2013), and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency (2008), among others.