Figueredo
Monica Figueredo pushes and blurs the boundaries of painting, experimenting with physical media to capture the aura of things, to seek a connection to the phenomenological nature of our world.
As a child, her forced displacement from Uruguay during a coup d’etat to North America unsettled her sense of identity, roots, and home. After completing a BFA in Painting & Drawing at OCAD University in Toronto, Figueredo has embarked on a nomadic artistic practice that has spanned 15 countries.
She is a mystical journey woman. Her inner compass resides between the earth and the cosmos, between sound and silence, tethered to the imaginary ground called home, in flux and fragility.
Contending with this liminality through art involves observing and disarming self, beliefs, ideas, contexts, and materials. Figueredo reconciles found materials, objects rescued from her environs, such as clay, discarded saris, and pigments. She tears, stitches, and burns these objects together in a dance of creation and destruction, inextricably entwined.
Currently based in Rajasthan, India, Figueredo’s latest works find their inspiration in supermassive black holes. Fire replaces the paintbrush, transforming the canvas in unforeseen ways. Colors and textures arise in shimmering wonder. Holes draw the viewer inward, to something beyond. From this, probabilities arise of the existence of alternate histories and passages to another universe.
Education
2004-2008
OCADU, Toronto, Canada
Awards
2008
Ron Shuebrook Award, Toronto
2008
Charles Stret Video Art Award, Toronto
2005
OCAD Faculty Memorial Award, Lois Hathaway, Toronto
2013
Aperture Film Festival, Asia Pacific
Ethnographic Documentary, "Path of Light"
Melbourne, Australia
Exhibitions
Solo
2010
"Ethereal Forest" Nuit Blanche, Toronto
Group
2020
Conjunction, The India Story, Swabhumi, Kolkatta, India
2014
Una Gracia Mistica les Concede, Plecto Gallery, Medellin
2014
Espacio, Plecto Gallery, Medelling, Colombia
2011
Sound Circles, Gaya Art Space, Ubud, Bali
2009
Saudades for Tomorrow, Median Contemporary, Toronto