MONICA CHURCH

JUNE 13 - JULY 12, 2026

Since the early 1990s, I have been making collages and photographs in post war spaces like Vietnam, Myanmar, Ireland, South Africa, and Nicaragua. In Berlin, Germany, it’s impossible to ignore the city’s fraught and violent history. My collages Fuck Putin and NO were made in 2024 while at Berlinage, an artist residency based in Berlin. All of the materials were sourced from the streets- I picked up discarded cigarettes, litter, tore advertising paste-ups down and ripped stickers from telephone poles and street signs- these micro-acts of collecting respond to the violent actions that I knew once took place on the former East German streets. Cutting can be a violent, as well as a constructive, impulse. Add glue, and one repairs and reassembles disparate bits into complete, whole new images. Collage is one way to process culture. I examine what happened, what is discarded, and how these paper materials reknit themselves into new narratives.

Collage is not merely an act of creation, but a preservation of memory—a reflection of the artist’s and the viewer’s relationship to place and material objects. The collage becomes a living document, transforming the discarded into something greater, something full of purpose. The materials in my collages speak to a broader cultural story, one that is constantly shifting and evolving. It is through the act of transformation that these materials—once seen as decay or insignificant—take on new life.