MONIKA WEISS
ARKHE — THE LOST CANTO, 2017-2014
SUMMER 2026
A Conversation with the Mountain: Monika Weiss’s "Arkhe-The Lost Canto" bridges the gap between the Himalayas and New York through haunting a cappella vocals, drawings, and the ritual of veiling
Streaming Museum is honored to premiere Arkhe-–The Lost Canto, a multidisciplinary work by the internationally acclaimed artist, composer, and filmmaker Monika Weiss. In the artist’s words, “The title Arkhe (Greek: ἀρχή) evokes the archaic, the beginning, and the origins of being, while Canto—a recurring title in my filmic works—frames the image as a song or a musical movement, transforming the screen into a site of vocalized memory.”
MONIKA WEISS WORKS AVAILABLE, MONOGRAPH, SELECTED REVIEWS
MONIKA WEISS - BIOGRAPHY
Monika Weiss is a New York based Polish-American visual artist and sound composer working in time-based media of music/sound, film/video, installation, and live performance. A significant part of her oeuvre continues to be works on paper. Weiss was trained as a classical pianist at the Warsaw School of Music before studying at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. Residency at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in the early 2000s inspired her relocation to New York City. Since 2023 she has been part of The Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art.
Weiss’ work has been presented in more than 100 exhibitions around the world. In 2024, her “Metamorphosis (Przemiana)” was acquired into the permanent collection of the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. The same year, a sister project, “Metamorphosis (Sound Sculpture),” was commissioned by Laumeier Sculpture Park. Solo museum exhibitions include those at the Museum of Memory & Human Rights, Santiago, Chile; Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami; and the Centre of Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland. In 2004 Weiss’ work was shown in a two-person exhibition with American artist Carolee Schneemann at Remy Toledo Gallery, New York. In 2022, she was part of a historical survey of Polish women artists at A.I.R. Gallery, New York, organized with lokal_30 Gallery, Warsaw. In 2016, her work was included in a survey of contemporary video art at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation in Athens. Currently a member of HyphenHub, an artists and curators organization, she frequently exhibits with the Streaming Museum.
The recipient of numerous awards, she was awarded the 2023 New York State Council on the Arts and the 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts interdisciplinary art fellowships. Weiss’ work has been reviewed by The New York Times, ARTnews, Art in America, Art Nexus, Arte Al Dia, Sculpture Magazine, Prague Post, Obieg and numerous others. Books on her work include a chapter in Guy Brett’s The Crossing of Innumerable Paths: Essays on Art (London: Ridinghouse, 2019) and a bi-lingual monograph, Monika Weiss. Nirbhaya(Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2021). Known primarily as an interdisciplinary artist, Weiss has also historically made music records, most recently in 2022 Monika Weiss-Metamorphosis/Nirbhaya was released by Infrequent Seams. Since 2011 the artist holds a professorship at Washington University in St Louis Missouri. Her studio is located in Brooklyn, New York.