Johanna Von Monkiewitsch - “Shush”
To say that Johanna Von Monkiewitsch works with light feels, somehow, too narrow. Light is certainly there—it plays a central role—but to describe her practice through that alone is to overlook what quietly animates it. Her work doesn’t simply transform light into a tangible, almost material presence—it opens a space for perception to unfold.
More than illumination, it is about the spaces around and between. About the negative form, the quiet residue of what remains unseen. The boundary between the visible and the invisible, the positive and the negative, becomes porous. Her pieces don’t present themselves with urgency; they wait. And they ask us, in turn, to meet them with a certain calm, a clarity of attention that comes only in stillness.
In Praise of Shadows inevitably comes to mind. Tanizaki writes of beauty not as something declared, but something discovered—in what is hidden, shaded, softened. Johanna’s work speaks to this, but also moves beyond it. Her shadows are not simply oppositions to light—they are part of its shape, its atmosphere, its reach. And always, there's a tension: the delicacy of perception sometimes held within the firmness of the materials elements that carry both weight and silence.
There is something dual in each piece: a complete form, and yet a lingering sense of inquiry. They feel at once like resolved works and ongoing studies. Precision sits alongside intuition. Solidity holds the ephemeral.
Perhaps this is where her work truly stands—in the space between what is grounded and what drifts. Between the real and the sensed. It’s in this quiet, slightly displaced realm that her practice finds its balance.
Sush is not just a title—it’s a gesture. A hush, a pause. An invitation into another tempo. A suggestion, perhaps, that time and light are not so different after all.
Zé Ortigão