Metamorphosis (Sound Sculpture) is a sonic and sculptural installation dedicated to victims of gender-based violence perpetuated worldwide. The sound sculpture will be accompanied in the fall by 2 live performance-based installations by the artist, with the participation of local vocalists and dancers.

On view:  August 24 – December 14, 2024
Laumeier Sculpture Park
12580 Rott Road
St. Louis, on the Art Hike Trail

On Saturday, August 24, 2024, at 11:30 am, Laumeier Sculpture Park will unveil new work by New York-based internationally acclaimed Polish artist Monika Weiss, Metamorphosis (Sound Sculpture), [2024-], curated by Dana Turkovic.  At 12 Noon the artist will introduce the piece and conduct a percussive performance, leading to the first emission of the sound from the sculpture at 12:30.

Monika Weiss’ Metamorphosis (Sound Sculpture), located along Laumeier Park’s wooded Art Hike, consists of two mysterious, heavy columns cast in steel, resembling tree trunks or armors. At specific times during the day the sculpture emits sound, a 35-minute long acoustic and electronic composition by the artist. Weiss created Metamorphosis (Sound Sculpture) inspired by the story of the mythological nymph Daphne who self-transforms into a tree to escape a violent attack. In the words of the artist, “I imagined how it would sound if my own skin turned into tree bark and my voice became whispering leaves.”

The 35-minute music is composed in six movements. The first four are based on the artist’s improvisations on an acoustic piano, later transformed into digitally manipulated layers of sound. The fifth part is composed of eight voices, which Weiss also digitally processed to create microtonal relationships. Weiss wrote the sixth part for two female voices conducting a musical dialogue with each other, which she juxtaposed with the sounds of drums, the basis of which is a recording of Weiss drumming against the surface of the sculpture as if it were an instrument.  Following the opening at Laumeier Sculpture Park, the 35-minute musical composition will be heard daily at the 7:30 am, 10 am, 12:30 pm, 3 pm and 5:30 pm.

The artist’s sister project Metamorphosis-Przemiana (2021-) opened to the public on July 27, 2024, and is now part of the permanent collection of Sculpture Park, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, National Heritage Institution of Poland (curator Mariusz Andrzejczyk). During the piece’s unveiling, the artist conducted a percussive performance using mallets to gently hit the sculpture’s surface as if it were a musical instrument.  

2024 Metamorphosis (Performance in a Park) in Sculpture Park, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, Poland took place on on July 27, 2024, and is now part of the permanent collection of Sculpture Park in Orońsko 

“The two sister projects located on two sides of the ocean invite visitors to immerse themselves within a sonic field, where there is no beginning and no end. During the periods of time when the columns stand silent, I hope they will provide a solace through their quiet strength and heaviness, akin to trees that became women warriors.” (Monika Weiss)

Weiss’ residency at Laumeier will be accompanied in the fall by two live vocal and movement performances with the participation of local vocalists and dancers: Orgē, a performance at the Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum, Missouri Botanical Garden, and Metamorphosis (Performance in the Park), on the Art Hike Trail at Laumeier, in physical proximity to the artist’s sculpture.

Monika Weiss’ Orge will take place at Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum, Missouri Botanical Garden on September 14 at 9 am. Orgē is a 20-minute vocal and movement piece composed for two groups of performers. First group includes performers standing, whispering or dancing in place. The artist created this choreography to evoke a forest of trees. Second group, the Wanderers, walk slowly signing melodies composed by the artist. The audience is invited to walk through this field of sound and movement, becoming immersed in the piece. Monika Weiss dedicates Orgē to all victims of wars, invasions, and colonial occupations, proposing a collective act of “unforgetting” (Weiss) through meditative and prolonged act of quiet resistance. The premiere of Orgé took place in 2022 at Furlong Gallery, University of Wisconsin at Stout, Menomonie, curated by Izabela Gola, independent curator and Visual Arts and Design Curator, Polish Cultural Institute New York. The 2024 edition of Orgē is curated jointly by Nezka Pfeifer, Museum Curator, Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum, and Dana Turkovic, Curator, Laumeier Sculpture Park.

Second performance titled Metamorphosis (Performance in a Park) curated by Dana Turkovic, will take place on October 10th at Laumeier Sculpture Park in physical proximity to Monika Weiss’ Metamorphosis (Sound Sculpture). For this piece the artist created a choreography of slow movement and composed melodies for each of the numerous performers individually, creating a field of polyphonic lamentation and sonic mediation, extending the meaning and the message of her sound sculpture into a living, breathing sonic organism. Vocalists and movement performers will be asked to imagine they are self-transforming into trees as they will be standing alongside the Art Hike Trail at Laumeier becoming “a river of sound and motion” (Weiss). The audience will be invited to slowly and silently walk through this sonic and movement-based field. Premiere of Monika Weiss’ Metamorphosis (Performance in a Park), curated by Weronika Elertowska, took place at Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko in 2021:

Monika Weiss
Biographical Note

Monika Weiss (b. 1964, Warsaw) is a visual artist and sound composer, author of installations, drawings, musical compositions, films and sculptures. Her internationally recognized intermedia work evokes ancient rituals of lamentation in a poetic response to events and places of collective trauma and memory. Monika Weiss studied music and visual arts. Based in New York since 2000 the artist holds a Professorship at Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis and is part of HyphenHub, a New York-based interdisciplinary new media art organization. Her works have been presented in over 100 exhibitions worldwide including institutional solo exhibitions at Museum of Memory & Human Rights, Santiago, Chile; Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami; Centre of Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; and Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York. She is the author of public projects at the World Financial Center Winter Garden, New York and at Gruenberg, Zielona Góra. Other notable exhibitions include Stavros Niarchos Art Foundation, Athens; Frauenmuseum, Bonn; Kunsthaus Dresden, Muzeum Montanelli, Prague, and North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks. Her works are part of public collections including Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami and Albertina Museum, Vienna, among many others.

Reviewed by ARTnews, Weiss’ sound installation Metamorphosis (2021–), was first featured in the survey of Polish feminist art at A.I.R. Gallery, New York (2022) in cooperation with Galeria lokal_30 in Warsaw, and has since been acquired into the permanent collection of the Sculpture Park at Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko (2024-). Since 2023 The Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art includes Monika Weiss as part of a collection of documents of art historian Julia P. Herzberg, PhD.  Weiss’ work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Art in America, Art Nexus, Arte Al Dia, Sculpture Magazine, Prague Post, and numerous other publications. Recent books include a chapter in Guy Brett’s The Crossing of Innumerable Paths: Essays on Art (London: Ridinghouse, 2019) and a comprehensive bi-lingual monograph Monika Weiss. Nirbhaya (Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2021). In 2021 The Metropolitan Museum of Art premiered a 30-min. film in which the artist shares her insights on the work of Francisco Goya and reflects on her own transdisciplinary practice, which investigates relationships between the body and history and evokes rituals of lamentation in response to tragedy.

LAUMEIER SCULPTURE PARK is located at 12580 Rott Road, Saint Louis, Missouri 63127, United States. Media/Press Inquiries:  Kate Martin, tel: 314.615.5277

© Photos by Jan Gaworski and Szymon Wikrota
© Monika Weiss Artist portrait by Paul Takeuchi