Monika Bartholomé has been drawing for many decades and explores drawing as a means of expression between head and hand. With the mobile museum for drawing, she founded an inspiring space for seeing and thinking in 2009, which was a guest at the Kunstmuseum Ahlen. Here, a wealth of collected materials could be viewed, touched, compared and studied: From cave drawings to everyday doodles, graffiti and tattoos to computer animation.
Monika Bartholomé's artistic work is characterized by forms of bringing things together and by intuitive reactions to what she sees or finds. In her reduced, sometimes pattern-like pencil or ink drawings, these impressions are transformed into poetic signs that tell of the fragility and fleetingness of man in the world. Melancholy and humor characterize her pictorial world in equal measure. For the artist, drawing is always an expedition into the unknown. The specific location plays an important role. In the Ahlen Art Museum, she has created an expansive drawing that you can enter and immerse yourself in. In doing so, Monika Bartholomé exploded the format and frame, expanded the drawing into the space and initiated movements and changes in perspective.
In 2017, an edition was created for the Museum für Zeichnung, in which ten artists participated. Monika Bartholomé invited the ten participating artists to take part in this exhibition. This showed that drawings can be created not only with a pencil or brush, but also with a finger, scissors, breath or sewing machine.
