Monica Curiel (b. 1993, Dallas, Texas)
Monica Curiel is a multidisciplinary artist and designer working across relief painting, art objects, sculptural furniture, and lighting. Working sculpturally with plaster and spackling paste as foundational materials, she explores their capacity to move between form and function, shifting their presence beyond utility.
Introduced to these materials through early exposure to construction environments while working alongside her father, and informed by her experience as a first-generation Mexican American, Curiel approaches them as both medium and subject. Her practice engages the histories embedded within them, where making becomes a dialogue between hand and material, carrying memory, labor, and cultural inheritance.
Curiel studied fashion and interior architecture before earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Kansas in 2021. A cancer diagnosis during this period contributed to the interdisciplinary and experimental nature of her practice.
Her work is held in the Denver Art Museum’s Architecture and Design collection. She has been recognized by Dwell 24 (2024) and Sight Unseen’s American Design Hot List (2023), and has exhibited internationally at Art Week Mexico (2026) and Milan Design Week (2022).
Photographed by Paul Miller