Master of Fine Art School of Fine Art

Monya Riachi

Monya Riachi is an artist working across sculpture and installation.

Monya’s practice is multidisciplinary and centres matter as a site of meaning and embedded psychosocial archive. Her artworks address how narratives can be shaped, altered and preserved through the migration of artefacts and histories. Drawn to material at risk of loss or under threat, her approach is rooted in Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism, where matter is generative in bringing forth [new matter and] new worlds. Through her work, Monya brings fiction alongside fact to propose realities that hover between speculation and possibility.

Monya was part of the 3-person show Short Lapses, Long Rolls at Saltspace, Glasgow (2023), and has been selected for Encounters, Janine Rubeiz’s 30th Anniversary exhibition in Beirut (2023). Her 2022 installation The Revolution is Open was featured in The Herald and The Scotsman. She has recently completed a residency with Ashkal Alwan Beirut in 2022.

Monya comes from a land where pine trees are centuries old and the sea is currency, born at the end of a period omitted from history, in a country known today as Lebanon. She is now based in the U.K. and works between London, Glasgow and Lebanon.

Contact
monya.riachi@gmail.com
M.Riachi1@student.gsa.ac.uk
monyariachi.com
Works
Where Bougainvilleas Bloom Ceaselessly
Violette

Where Bougainvilleas Bloom Ceaselessly

Sea salt crystals (Lebanese coast)
Salt, NH₄NO₃ pigment
Manganese glass (Villa Linda Sursock) – 19th Century/2020
Unidentifiable rock (Lebanese coast)
Bougainvillea – preserved
Sandstone rock, Limestone rock (Lebanese coast) –  2.6 Millenia
Concrete aggregate rock (Lebanese coast)
‘Safad’ (oyster) shells (Mediterranean Sea)
Pottery fragment (Mediterranean Sea) – speculation Roman era
Plastic carrier bag
Glasswax, plaster, iron powder, clay slip, concrete block, steel tube, single channel projection and audio

Photo: Matt Barnes
For Sale: Contact for Price
Text
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price
Photo: Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price

Violette

In Monya Riachi’s intimate film of her grandmother, we are given few words and many gestures, we are given sounds of the city in which her Teta resides, we are given glimpses inside rooms, and cupboards, and vessels—glimpses inside relations. We sense in watching this film that there is something sliding away from us. It is not meant for our senses, but there is something honourable, and lean, and generous in its being here before us. For a short, calm while we are contained within its embrace, knowing soon, as it should, it will end. In being alive for us, it does not betray itself, but it does say something about our desire to capture one another, in anticipation of being gone from each other forever. (Kate Holford)

Excerpt from Ways to Fall, written by Kate Holford for the exhibition Short Lapses Long Rolls (Saltspace, March 2023).

Installation View (MFA Degree Show)

Photo by Chih-Kang Hsu
For Sale: Contact for Price

Installation View

Photo by Chih-Kang Hsu

Installation View

Photo by Chih-Kang Hsu

Video still

Video Still

Installation View

Short Lapses Long Rolls (Saltspace, 2023)