MONICA MENDES
Monica was born in Belo Horizonte/MG but divides her time between the capital of Minas Gerais and Miami/USA.
Her childhood was surrounded by people who needed even more attention, such as her brother, who had a much more severe form of dyslexia than she did, and as a result, she grew up managing on her own.
It was only in 2016 that she decided to make art the central focus of her career, pursuing a master's degree in the field. Since then, she has focused her painting on the Brazilian people, always drawing attention to prejudices and social injustices whenever possible.
@MONICA_MM_ART
2022
ACHIEVEMENT
In response to the text accompanying the short film UN[BOX]ED, “When we remove the layers – who decides who we really are and who creates the box that we are so often told we fit into?”, the artist Monica Mendes, in an attempt to reinvent herself and understand her limitations, shows, in these two paintings, how she decided to make her dream a reality, “thinking outside the box” to become a visual artist.
To illustrate this trajectory, the artist, in the presentation of her final thesis for her Master of Fine Arts degree at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, created the series "Self-Identity".
In it, she portrays, through important characters in her life, her fears and joys as she faced the paradigm shifts in her life. In the second work, "Achievement," which is part of a series of 11 paintings, Monica depicts herself immersed in work in her studio, in a kind of reflection of the first work in the series, "Inspiration," which portrays her first influence, her grandmother. This mirroring between the two works also suggests the difficulty she faced while learning to read and write. "Self-Identity," the artist's first series, therefore literally means the freedom Monica sought and, at the same time, represents her responsibility in taking her life into her own hands.
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Oscar D'Ambrosio
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VISUAL ARTS
2023
SOUL OF THE WORLD
The universe of urban communities is depicted with a circle that appears black at the top and white at the bottom. This visual interplay suggests a dialogue between the brightness of the sky and the darkness of the shadows. This is not a simplistic dichotomy, but a symbolic complexity that relativizes the way of thinking about and experiencing daily life in the Brazilian peripheries.
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Oscar D'Ambrosio
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VISUAL ARTS
2024
RESISTANCE
The artist brings a sense of shared experience with the collective. The images depicted can be interpreted as an amalgam of houses from communities, masks that seek to ensure isolation, and other elements of daily life. The essential point is to observe how they are arranged, establishing the message that society as a whole is more important than each individual separately. In this way, each day of existence takes on the connotation of a step towards building a potentially more harmonious world.
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Oscar D'Ambrosio
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VISUAL ARTS
2025
SOUL OF THE WORLD IV
The urban universe that emerges in this visual representation is characterized by the way certain geometries are present in the composition. Circles, for example, interact with rectangles in a visual stylization that presents living in community as existing within a universe of emotions, in which various procedures are developed by each person in order to have a more harmonious and creative existence to face the multiple difficulties of daily life, which encompass the various layers of existence, from financial needs to leisure.
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Oscar D'Ambrosio
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VISUAL ARTS
by
MONICA
I paint my surroundings and the Brazilian people, warning against prejudices and social injustices. I choose to create, from
figurative and/or realistic form, images made with oil paint on linen or mixed media on cardboard that
so that they can contribute to building a better society.