Monica

Since the beginning of their relationship, Pablo Lilienfeld and Federico Vladimir have been amazed by their mothers’ very parallel lives. They shared the name ‘Monica’, grew up in Argentina in the 1950s as daughters of European war refugees, and migrated back to Spain as adults.  

In Monica, the two multimedia artists go in search of their mothers’ histories. Monica Lilienfeld, Pablo’s mother, died in 1986 at a young age, leaving behind a huge number of colourful, fascinating paintings.  Monica Pezdirc, Fede’s mother, shook off her strict Catholic upbringing and posed as a nude model for Fede’s father’s erotic photographs in the 1980s.  

These photographs and paintings form the visual building blocks of the performance–a range of performance, dance, video, and music elements. Although it is about their mothers, Lilienfeld and Vladimir may see Monica as their shared ‘daughter’. The artist couple happily mixes up traditional genealogies, and in doing so they weave a web of non-heteronormative motherhood. Monica is like a ‘telenovela’, in which wars, migration, and classical patriarchal stories exist side by side – but where, above all, the stories that have been erased can fully realise their potential.  

• Pablo (1981) and Fede (1983) have been a couple since 2014. From the beginning of their relationship their artistic practice has been intertwined with their relationship. Intimacy is the starting point of their work, in which they pursue representations of collectivity that challenge the dominant ways in which we talk about ourselves. ‘Narrarse es cuidarse’, is their motto: talking about ourselves is also caring for ourselves (and others).