Mariana Monteagudo

Mariana Monteagudo is an award-winning Venezuelan sculptor, born in Caracas in 1976 and based in Miami, Florida. Since 1998 she has worked on an ongoing series of doll sculptures, which she calls Muñecas (Dolls): figures in latex, ceramic and mixed media that are at once intriguing, fascinating and unsettling. Her practice draws on a wide range of references, from pre-Columbian aesthetics to fashion, television pop culture, Japanese manga and mass-market toys.

The work is grounded in the conviction that we are easily manipulated, shaped by the beliefs, images and perceptions society imposes. Through the dolls she reflects on how external forces influence desire, fear and identity: beauty standards tell us we should look like Barbie, films teach us to fear dolls as sinister or haunted, and in other contexts dolls become powerful objects in religious or ceremonial ritual. Each case shows how meaning is assigned and how readily we accept it.

Her process has remained natural and intuitive since the first small statuettes she made from plaster, ceramic, cloth and wax, whatever was at hand. She scavenges materials and inspiration from hardware stores, thrift shops and her own neighborhood on trash day, guided by a lifelong belief that there is no ignoble material and that everything deserves a second chance through creative reuse.

The Muñecas have earned international recognition through solo and group exhibitions and art fairs in Madrid, Miami, Amsterdam, Chicago, Aruba, Caracas, Bogotá, New York, São Paulo and elsewhere, and her unusual characters have attracted the attention of critics. Her work is held in the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in California, the Everson Museum of Art in New York and the César Gaviria Trujillo Collection, among other contemporary art collections. The documentary Uncanny: The Dolls of Mariana Monteagudo, produced by the filmmaker Elaine Minionis and released in 2018, follows her through the creation of her series Uncanny; it won twelve festival awards in the United States and Canada and was named an official winner of the PBS Filmmaker Project in 2020, which brought it to a nationwide public television audience.