"Creature II" Drawing

Mónika Ardila is a multidisciplinary artist based in Stockholm whose practice explores the relatioship between femininity, nature, memory, and transformation. Working across painting, collage, installation, and mixed media, her work inhabits a space between tenderness and unease, where fragmented bodies, animal forms, and organic landscapes become emotional terrains.

Her earlier works investigated identity and materiality through sculptural and installation-based practices. After moving to Stockholm in 2019 to work within the fashion industry, and later experiencing motherhood, her artistic practice underwent a profound interruption and transformation. Returning to painting in recent years, Mónika developedan intuitive visual language rooted in instinct, vulnerability, and emotional reconstruction.

Through layered gestures, soft yet intense color palettes, and symbolic forms, her work reflects on care, displacement, femininity, and the fragile coexistence between human and natural worldsI develop my work by building an imaginary context, through a process of composing, decontextualizing, rearming or loosening elements and messages altogether, from our era. All this with the aim of bringing them to a common language and at the same time reallocating their multiple and new possible meanings.

Bio
Born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1985, moved to Barcelona in 2000, and now based in Stockholm since 2019. I was lucky enough to grow up in a very artistic and creative environment, between art, graphic design, sewing arts, etc. I do think the people with whom I grew up had a great impact on the way I see the world This allowed me to start creating a vision from an early age. My grandmother was always sewing and doing crafts, my mother is a graphic designer and my father is an artist. I can sense their influence and I feel very grateful for that.
I studied Humanities, Electronic Art, Digital Design, and a Degree in contemporary art in Barcelona.