Mona Oren is born in Israel. She lives and works in Paris.
For twenty years, Mona Oren has been creating a protean body of work that brings together drawing, photography, video and installation. Its center of gravity is, however, sculpture. Led to art by her desire to be in contact with the material substances, volumes and surfaces, she creates three-dimensional artworks which are then put into different settings by means of spatialization, transcription, photographic series or video.
Laureate of the Liliane Bettencourt Prize pour L’intelligence de la main in 2018, Mona Oren develops, in her artistic practice, a center of expertise in molding and casting in wax.
Wax, this "living", "organic" material that one may perceive in terms of its vulnerability: fragile, sensitive to aging or heat, it is under a constant threat of deformation. It is also an "intimate" medium. If nature and vegetal world were originally the source of inspiration for Mona Oren's work, she has now turned towards a more abstract and formal direction, while questioning her personal history.
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Mona Oren's approach, which exploits evocative and formal force of the materials, can be likened to a post-minimalist practice; however, she enriches it with a more volatile emotivity. Symbolism, eroticism, humor are also present, alongside with doubt and modesty. The layers of meaning which add up in the viewer's eye are more delicate, translucent, than the statements of intent. They are composed by successive thin layers, by infinitesimal films, - between depth and fragility.
The works by Mona Oren were shown in numerous exhibitions, both in museums and galleries, in France and abroad.