Monika Sosnowska

Monika Sosnowska was born in Ryki, Poland, in 1972 and lives and works in Warsaw.  

Monika Sosnowska’s work combines architecture and sculpture. Her constructions multiply and transform the spaces they occupy, sometimes becoming the space itself. For Sosnowska, art is first and foremost an experience: a moment when the viewer encounters spaces and sensations that are disorienting but also prompt them to reconsider the spaces they move through in everyday life, particularly domestic ones. She often works with the labyrinth, shifts in scale, and the tension between emptiness and density. The transformation of familiar objects leaves the viewer caught between recognition and uncertainty: realistic details point to the original object, while its altered form becomes strange and illogical. At times, Sosnowska’s formal language emphasizes the fragmented, even chaotic nature of the contemporary world. 

During her residency at Atelier Calder, Sosnowska returned to a research project centered on maquettes. She created a series of new models for sculptures she was developing, two of which were later realized at full scale. This process echoed Calder’s own practice of enlarging maquettes into monumental sculptures. Scale and space are central to the artist’s work, with the relationship between Sosnowska’s maquette and the finished sculpture sometimes reaching a ratio of one to ten.