MÓNICA HERNÁNDEZ

MÓNICA HERNÁNDEZ (she/her)

Monica Hernandez was born in Santiago, Dominican Republic, and currently lives and works in the Bronx, NY.  Her paintings engage with the body, desire, sex, sexuality, religion, representation, and the way interior spaces can be both liberating and constraining.

While not trying to allude to any specific moment, her work is a culmination of conscious and subconscious dreams, desires, and fears, of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Mónica’s paintings speak about the taboos put onto her identity and body as a Caribbean woman growing up — the fear ingrained behind the concepts of sex, religion, body hair, menstruation, acne, and innocence. Her subjects are mainly women of color lounging in domestic spaces usually nude, a nuanced stab at the white male gaze in art history creating paintings and sculptures of nude women. Hernández takes full agency over her images showing the complexities and dynamic ways women of color exist.