Monica Ross (2005 - 14 June 2013) was a mother, activist and artist.
Monica Ross produces drawings, performances, video and text works. They arise from durational processes, sequential acts or events and explore experience in the present and its cultural transition–or not–into memory and history. Her works have been presented in many exhibitions and contexts since the 1970s, when feminism and other movements for social, cultural and political change were formative in shaping her experimental and often collaborative art practice.
In December 2008, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Ross performed the first of 60 recitations in her ongoing work Anniversary—an act of memory: solo, collective and multi-lingual recitations from memory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the British Library, London. Shortly before the interview the series reached Act 40 with 27 local Co-Recitors who memorised and spoke Articles in 16 languages at Arnolfini, Bristol.
Ross has published critical essays and text works such as her artist’s book valentine. She was Guest Professor at Institut für Kunst in Kontext, Universität der Künste, Berlin 2004, an AHRB Research Fellow in Fine Art at the University of Newcastle 2001-2004, and led the innovative Critical Fine Art Practice course at Central Saint Martins, London 1990-1998.