Monica Kim GarzaUSA

Monica Kim Garza (b. 1988, Alamogordo, New Mexico, US) creates vibrant paintings of female figures that reject the dominant male gaze. Her works offer a vision of uninhibited female leisure, joy, and agency. Rendered with expressionistic brushwork and a bold, tonal palette, Garza’s (often nude) subjects are situated in lush, atmospheric environments—at once real and imagined. Whether lounging, lifting weights, drinking, or playing ping pong, the women in her paintings embody a playful assertion of presence and freedom.

Her paintings challenge narrow representations of femininity by celebrating diverse bodies and identities in everyday moments, reclaiming space with humor, sensuality, and empowerment.

She received her BFA in Painting and Drawing from California College of the Arts in 2010. Garza has had numerous significant solo exhibitions, including at Galerie Julien Cadet in Paris (2022), V1 Gallery in Copenhagen (2020, 2019), New Image Art Gallery Los Angeles (2020, 2017), and Lily Robert in Paris (2017). She was also included, among others, in the institutional group exhibition The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art at the New Britain Museum of American Art (2019), Woman at Allouche Benias Gallery in Athens (2020), and She`s a Knockout at the Lowe Art Museum in Miami (2024). Her works are held in several international private and public collections. Garza lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.

Artist Statement:

My artwork explores the human form as a motif, a dialogue between art history and the modern world, the intimate and the universal. I use the female figure as a muse for shape, tracing back to the earliest depictions of humans in their purest form. Intrinsically being female, I empathize with this figure, allowing the mark-making of painting to voice mood and suspend time. I’m drawn to painting for its material memory—its accidents, textures, freedom, and permanence beyond the digital. I’m intrigued by the past and present; how through gestures, archetypes, and subjects like hiking and clothing, etc, each carry historical resonance alongside contemporary meaning. I move between immediacy and slow layering, play and patience, seeking continuity rather than rupture.  I try to speak the language of paint—reminding us that even in our most modern selves, we remain bound to our pure form.