Red Dawn (Punane Koit) documents the action of restoring the letters of the sign on the rooftop of a hosiery factory in Tallinn. Punane Koit (Red Dawn in English) was the name of the factory during the Soviet period. In the beginning of the 1990s after Estonia became independent, the factory was privatized and renamed. The letters for the sign Punane Koit were removed from the rooftop. The metal construction supporting the letters, however, has remained there until quite recently. Red Dawn, despite its inherent reference to communism, also alludes to a less visible poetic: hope, dreams of the better future, and new beginnings.
Marge Monko lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia. She primarily deploys photography, installation, and moving images. She is interested in how these media are and have been used as tools in the fields of science, communication (such as press, advertising), and in state institutions, among other things. Most of her works link to some historical event and are influenced by psychoanalysis, feminism, and theories of visual culture. Monko’s artistic strategies include documentation, staging, and appropriation; she often uses a combination of these in her artistic research. Monko has had solo exhibitions in Tallinn, Helsinki, Budapest, and Vienna. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Manifesta 9, Genk; in Fotomuseum Winterthur; at Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art.
