Monica Curiel (b. 1993, Dallas, Texas)
Monica Curiel is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose practice centers on plaster and spackling paste as primary materials, working across relief painting, art objects, sculptural furniture, and lighting. She investigates these materials for their physical and conceptual potential, moving them between form and function while reframing how they are understood and experienced.
Raised in Dallas by Mexican parents from Jalisco, Curiel was introduced to these materials on construction sites working alongside her father. Her work draws on their embedded histories of labor and cultural significance, transforming materials long associated with utility into objects that engage memory, identity, and cultural inheritance.
Curiel holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Kansas (2021). 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