Bengoa, Mónica

Bengoa, Mónica

1969

Mónica Bengoa graduated as Bachelor of Fine Art (Printmaking) from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in 1992, where her tutors included Eduardo Vilches, Eugenio Dittborn, and Pedro Millar. During her degree she took additional specialised courses in cinematography and completed a course in filmmaking at the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano de Cultura, where her first solo exhibition Para Hacer en Casa (To Make at Home) took place shortly after graduation. Her work is characterised by the collecting together and careful arrangement of small elements, which may be groups of photographs, prints, or drawings. Bengoa represented Chile at the first Bienal de Mercosur (Porto Alegre, Brazil) in 1997 and since that time has been involved in successive group shows. Amongst these are several organised in conjunction with Jemmy Button Inc., a collective of which she is a founder member (with the artists Mario Navarro and Christian Silva, and the critic Justo Mellado). She exhibited with this group at the Delfina Studio Trust in London in 1996, and donated the work Recursos Humanos: Se hace querer to ESCALA during her stay in the UK. Recent solo exhibitions include The Color of the Garden at the latincollector centre, New York, USA and enero, 7:25 (January, 7:25) at the Galeria Gabriela Mistral, Santiago, Chile in 2004; Platos, Cepillos, Sábanas... (Plates, Brushes, Cloths...) at the Casa de la Cultura, Cauquenes, Chile and de siete a diez (from seven to ten) at the Galeria Oxigeno, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia in 2003. She has completed residencies in the USA and Bolivia and received several grants and fellowships, including the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (2003-2004).