2023 MFA Thesis Exhibition

Ash Moniz is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans performance, installation, video and film. Their research deals primarily with the policing/securitization of supply-chain logistics and its’ labour, and how this history intersects with that of moving image.

Through interviews and performative collaborations, they work with the ways that stories are told (the sonic performativity of spoken word), deconstructing the temporality of narrative structure in “Just-In-Time” transportation logistics. The word “plot” and its historical etymological connection between land ownership and the arrangement of dramatic structure on a stage, is foundational to how Moniz approaches the intersection of cartography and scenography.

Such practice is informed by years of research including field work on container ships, at transport union offices, and in ports around the world. Working with artifacts, documents, conducted interviews, and found media that span from London 1792 to Sokhna 2013, Moniz “plots” systematic procedures of motion within the flows of value, subject hood, and causality. 

Through series and chapters, interconnected through long-term conceptual projects, Moniz’s practice formulates correlative arguments, alternative rationalities, and expanded conceptual architectures. Using a historical-materialist approach, their work questions the representability of logistical violence, and the imaging potentiality of logistical sites of labour. Their practice dialectically attempts to embody the abstract specificities of epistemic violences, without reproducing them.

Moniz’s exhibitions including solo shows at Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), Sishang Museum (Beijing), and Birch Contemporary (Toronto); duo exhibitions at Kelder Projects (London) and Pari Nadimi (Toronto); , and in group shows such as Villa Romana (Florence), Sheffield DocFest (Sheffield), the Berlinale Forum Expanded (Berlin), the Dakar Biennale (Dakar), and the Minsheng Museum (Shanghai). They were recently an artist in residence at Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen (Innsbruck), and the Maritime Portal Residency with Times Museum 

Moniz has also participated in many independent study programs such as at Mass Alexandria (Alexandria), the Harun Farocki Institute (Berlin), and Raw Material Company (Dakar). Moniz holds a BA from OCAD University (Toronto, 2014) and is pursuing an MFA from Parsons (New York, 2023). As a writer, Moniz is a contributor for Mada Masr (2016-present), and has published in MIT’s peer-review journal Thresholds, Kayfa Ta Publishing’s “SuperHeat” book, along with a book publication with the Radical Film Network Meeting Berlin. They also recently held a teaching position at the Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences.