
MONIKA K ADLER
be inspired
ARTIST'S STATEMENT //
Monika K. Adler is a photographer and avant-garde filmmaker based in London, United Kingdom, known for her challenging and provocative photography and experimental films.
Born in Poland, she graduated from The European Academy of Photography in Warsaw, Poland and the Wojciech Gerson’s National School of Fine Arts. After that she moved to Paris, France (2004), where she photographed the life of the city and its artistic Bohemia. Her first solo show: ’Monika K. Adler - La photographie moderne’ took place in the Galerie La Tour at the Rue Saint Honore in Paris, in January 2005. Between 2005-2012 Monika led a vagabond lifestyle and travelled 180 places in Europe and New York to create a photography project ’Travel no End’. Comprising 200 prints, this is a poetic documentary journal of contemplating daily life in its deepest form.
She first gained attention with the transgressive photography series and art-film Chernobyl of Love (2012), filmed in Ukraine, near the ruins of the 1986 nuclear accident.
From 2012 Monika lives and works in London, United Kingdom. She focuses on black and white conceptual and fine art photography, addressing cultural constructions of memory, history and trauma, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. She creates video art and films as well. Her upcoming feature film, Sick Bacchus, tells a story of pathological consumption amongst London’s wealthy elite.
In 2018 she was nominated to a Hundred Heroines - The Royal Photographic Society’s Award in the United Kingdom. As one of two-hundred of the best female photographers in the UK, the project 209 Women selected Adler to photograph one of the female members of UK parliament. The exhibition showed at the Palace of Westminster, London and Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, 2018-19. Her work is held in the Houses of Parliament’s permanent collection.
Her works have been shown in over 150 exhibitions, video art and film festivals internationally. These have included: Gwangju Biennale, KR; Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, UK; House of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Lagos Photo Festival 20: Home Museum; Photo London, Somerset House, London, UK. Rankin 2020 #Self – Sky Arts; Saint Germain Photo Festival, Paris, France: UK; Auckland Photo Festival, New Zealand; Gislaveds Konsthall, Sweden; The State Museum of Gulag, Moscow; West Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands; CICA Museum, Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, KR; Museum of Image and Sound, Florianopolis, Brazil; Edinburgh International Festival; BBC 100 Women, London, etc.
Monika K. Adler’s films and image-based works have been the subject of several academic studies and published in many magazines and publications including: The Eye of Photography, GUP Magazine, Vogue Italia, Art & Commerce + Vogue Italia, Photographer Russia, Beta development in photography, So anyway Magazine, Dodho Magazine, Private Photo Review, Harper Bazaar UK, Guardian, The Times, Leica Photography Internationale, The Ambivalent Body: On The Short Films Of Monika K. Adler, 2013, The Martyrdom of the Angel’s Body: The Female Artist as Naked Signifier, 2014, 209 Women – Photography Book, 2019, Rankin’s 2020 – Photography Book 2020, Review Of Monika K. Adler’s Photographic Work: A Psychological Perspective, 2013.