Monica Curiel (b. 1993, Dallas, Texas)

Monica Curiel is a multidisciplinary artist and designer who transforms construction materials such as spackling paste and plaster into relief paintings, sculpture, and collectible design, including lighting and furniture. Introduced to these materials while working alongside her father on construction sites, she draws from the cultural, familial, and labor histories embedded in mediums often handled by immigrant workers yet rarely acknowledged. By situating her works in spaces tied to her community’s labor, including homes, construction sites, and landscapes, Curiel honors these histories through craft, material sensitivity, and refined technique.

Rooted in her experience as a first-generation Mexican American, Curiel’s practice explores identity, visibility, and cultural inheritance. Through tactile investigations, she examines how materials and labor carry memory, reframing industrial mediums within contemporary Mexican American art and design.

Curiel studied fashion and interior architecture before earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Kansas in 2021. Navigating a cancer diagnosis during this time shaped the experimental and interdisciplinary nature of her practice.

Her work is held in the Denver Art Museum’s Architecture and Design collection and has received international recognition, including Dwell’s Dwell 24 (2024) and Sight Unseen’s American Design Hot List (2023). She has exhibited at Design Week México (2025) and Milan Design Week (2022), as well as Artsy’s Art in the Time of Corona (2021).

Photographed by Paul Miller