When I was a child, I never played with dolls. My mother always warned me about opening the boxes they were in. “They will lose their beauty”, she said. Obeying her, I made my room an altar of dolls, and I ended up being part of the collection. My dolls were the objects of my desire, untouchable but wanted.
As an artist, provocative, whimsical and witty, I strive to make work that recreates that feeling of longing… I want to play and touch and make people fly. Through imagination, I explore how pleasure works by creating voyeuristic art toys that evoke the female body, exciting tactile and visual senses.
Suggestive, vibrant and prophetically seductive. Ms. Velez is a very talented young voice with a sensual and tactful eye.
ReplyDeleteIn these strange, difficult and destructive times, there are those who have become aware of an agonizing truth; every action taken may result in negative consequences. Every step in an attempt to move ourselves forward, no matter how cautiously taken, may be detrimental to the advancement of something or someone else. All living things are all intricately and inextricably linked together.
ReplyDeleteTo these sensitive and intelligent souls the desire to have is tempered by that agonizing truth: that the very act of grasping may somehow diminish the thing longed for.
In a sense, what Monica Velez does with her art (and indeed with her very soul) is to make a safe space where desire may be freely expressed and pursued. Contrary to her mother's admonishment to sacrificially preserve the unblemished state of the thing desired, she invites us to wholly "take the dolls out of their boxes" and play freely.
And in so doing, she allows us to fly.