Bio:
Monica Sheets is a Saint Louis-based artist who explores ideas of participation and authority by producing installations, organizing events, and developing archives and oral histories. The throughline of her work is a focus on historiography and identity, exploring how our stories about the past play out in our lives today. This work follows a documentary tradition that resists sentimentality, confronts the elusive nature of truth, and embraces competing narratives. She is seeking to understand what it means to be an engaged citizen in the world beyond traditional forms of activism.
Monica was born in Toledo, Ohio and studied photography at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Her experiences in the Rust Belt were pivotal to her decision to work directly with participants. From 2010 to 2014, she led Das Fundbuero, a storefront space in Leipzig that collected objects, hosted events and created a space for considering the nuances of East German history by the people who lived it. Recently, she worked on a series of collaborative projects with erotic dancers to explore the current conditions of and utopian visions for stripping.
Monica received an MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany. Her work has been recognized by grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, FORECAST Public Art, the MCAD-Jerome Fellowship for Emerging Artists, the Culture Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and A Blade of Grass Foundation’s Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art.
The Feminist Strip Club: The VIP Room
2019, participatory performance
The Feminist Strip Club was a group of current and former erotic dancers gathered by Monica Sheets to explore the present conditions of and utopian visions for stripping.
Modeled on its strip club namesake, The VIP Room was a space for one-to-one discussion. Dancers created menus of questions to focus discussion on the issues important to them.
After discussion, dancers gave visitors an envelope and sent them to check out with the “house mom”—a type of backstage manager at clubs. The house mom walked visitors through paying fees to the club and tipping out to management and other staff. Scenarios ranged from a “good night” (earning $1850 and leaving with $995) to a “bad night” (owing the club money at shift end).
The Feminist Strip Club: The GRIND, Issues 1 – 3
2019 – 2023, digital print, 8.5 x 11″, 250 copies, 28pp
The GRIND was a zine covering issues relevant to the erotic dance community with artwork and writing by current and former dancers. The audience was both other dancers and a broad general audience.
Click below to view the issues!
Issue 1, August 2019
Issue 2, May 2021
Issue 3, May 2023
Untitled Work in Progress
2023-2025, ink on paper, pastel on concrete, blacklight, audio, variable dimensions
For this body of work, Sheets drew from memory the floorplans of the strip clubs she worked at as a teenager. As she made each drawing, she recorded a narration of this process of remembrance. She forms a multi-layer document by revisiting the audio recordings and adding additional information that is triggered when listening onto another layer of paper. The image above shows one redrawn floorplan, enlarged to fill a space, with audio playing. A video excerpt is available here https://youtu.be/S2JgrWYFAWE?si=7wxAoPPygMgX80Za
The image above shows the first layer of one floorplan, and the image below shows a final floorplan, each layer represented by a different UV reactive ink. The final floorplans will be presented as installations in small booths with the audio narration.
