Biography

Mônica Ventura (b. 1985, São Paulo, Brazil) is a visual artist and designer, holding a degree in Industrial Design from FAAP and a master’s in Visual Poetics (PPGAV) from ECA-USP. Her work investigates the complex intersections of femininity and race. Through in-depth research, the artist rescues and reinterprets pre-colonial cultural elements, such as the architecture and manual techniques of Afro-Amerindian peoples. For Ventura, this immersion in ancestral knowledge is a means of personal reconnection. “Ancestrality is a key to remembering who we are and continuing to break away from the colonial framework that seeks to polish individuality,” she explains.

Her multidisciplinary practice spans video, sculpture, and painting, allowing her to navigate between the spiritual and the tangible, and to give voice to the multifaceted experiences of Black women, with an approach that merges strength and feminine delicacy. By challenging aesthetic formalism, Ventura creates a "beautiful organized noise" that invites the audience to reflect on identity, memory, and power.

Mônica Ventura lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Her solo exhibitions include A Noite Suspensa ou o que posso aprender com o Silêncio at Instituto Inhotim (2023), Brumadinho, Brazil, and O Sorriso de Acotirene at Centro Cultural São Paulo (2018), São Paulo, Brazil. She has participated in major group exhibitions at museums and institutions, such as Cantando Bajito (Incantations) at the Ford Foundation (2024), New York, USA; Encruzilhadas da Arte Afro-brasileira at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (2023), São Paulo, Brazil; Brasil Futuro: Formas da Democracia at Museu da República (2023), Brasília, Brazil; Carolina Maria de Jesus: um Brasil para os brasileiros at Instituto Moreira Salles (2021), São Paulo, Brazil; Enciclopédia Negra at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (2021), São Paulo, Brazil; and Histórias Feministas at Museu de Arte de São Paulo (2019), São Paulo, Brazil.

Her work is also part of the Instituto Inhotim collection, Brumadinho, Brazil and Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil.