Mónica Mays lives and works between Madrid and Amsterdam. Her sculptural practice combines autobiography, material process, and historical archive. Her pieces consist of assemblages of anachronistic domestic and industrial waste, which she reconfigures and appropriates through the incorporation of raw materials. Drawing from Baroque logics, Mays explores excess, edges, and movement, focusing on the complex layering of meaning embedded in the objects she uses—ranging from the symbolic and linguistic to the functional. Her work oscilates between fragility and abjectual.
Having studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of New Orleans, she graduated from the École Superieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg in 2015 and received an MA from the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam in 2017. She has developed projects in artistic residencies such as Rupert (Vilnius), Matadero (Madrid) or Cemeti Institut for Art and Society (Yogyakarta, Indonesia). Her works have been exhibited in spaces such as Arti et Amicitiae (Amsterdam), Tallinn Art Hall (Tallinn), KUBUS (Hannover), Goethe Institut (Bucarest), Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen (Netherlands) or La Casa Encendida (Madrid). This year she was awarded the Community of Madrid Art Prize and her work was acquired by notable institutions such as Reina Sofia Museum, CA2M or Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Other awards include the 3PD prize bestowed by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts 2022, the Mondriaan Fonds Young Artist Stipendium 2023, and the Generation 2022 prize from the Montemadrid Foundation.
