VITA

2013  Member  VG Bild Kunst

2012  Member  Atelierhaus Aachen e.V.

2012 – 2016  Member  BBK Aachen

2007 – 2011  Member  Fördergemeinschaft Junger Kunst e.V.

2006 – 2011  Board member dreieck.triangle.driehoek e.V.

1994 – 1995  Founding- and board member dreieck.triangle.driehoek e.V.,

1995  Art price  city of Lohmar, price of honor

1978 – 1983  Studies art/textile design, RWTH Aachen, Fak. VIII, Prof. Benno Werth

1958  born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany

 

Work in public colletions

Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch, Germany

IKOB, Museum for Contemporary Art, Eupen, Belgium

Kangaeru-Shirou kan Kawauchi mura, Fukushima, Japan

Geoje Haegeumgang Theme Museum, Yukyung Art Museum Geoje, South Korea

Sparkasse Gelsenkirchen, Germany

Sparkasse Westmünsterland, Germany

City of Lohmar, Germany

City of Buxtehude, Germany

 

The plastic shopping bag is part of our cultural history and intrinsically tied to our cultural and consumer behavior. It reveals more about its users, as they are concious of.  Usable as advertising medium and instrument for transportation of merchandises at the same time, everyone utilizes plastic shopping bags – and throws them away. The world wide annual amount of their consumption is projected at approximately one billion pieces. This impact on global energy resources requires us to reconsider our social responsibility to environment and nature.

Monika Radhoff-Troll uses plastic bags as materials for installations, by cutting them into small stripes and fitting them together in a new manner. Bags from The New York Times, Monopol (German art magazine) or Washington Post are elaborately knotted by hand and changed into a contemporary kind of tapestry or pillow. In gorgeous colorful or monochrome shades, the former plastic bags become new, sensuously tangible objects, whose commercial origin is rarely identified. Former commercial prints or logos are decoded and fragmented in such a manner, that we recognize their original messages only on second glance.

Regarding the contradiction of form and content, Monika Radhoff-Troll invites us to reflect. How is it possible, that something detrimental to nature can be aesthetically pleasing? How can such a cool and artificial plastic material appear so soft and organic? How can a material, former used for commerce, change into an art object? Such questions, keep the viewer occupied in a subtle and playful way but does not let them go quickly as these installations leave a deeply serious impression.