![MONICA ZERINGUE, Glisten [detail], 2011](https://www.jonathanferraragallery.com/media/cache/resolve/472x472_fit/5493565707a72c7342335013/23ed1b4557529ec51082a4b0629aee2c.jpeg)
![MONICA ZERINGUE, Bloom [detail], 2008](https://www.jonathanferraragallery.com/media/cache/resolve/472x472_fit/5493565707a72c7342335013/ceaf7088a7b5bda0e2a646f79e4c22c5.jpeg)
![MONICA ZERINGUE, Matador [installation view], 2007](https://www.jonathanferraragallery.com/media/cache/resolve/472x472_fit/5493565707a72c7342335013/482d406677917f13561284f6e54bea8b.jpeg)
![MONICA ZERINGUE, Matador [front view], 2007](https://www.jonathanferraragallery.com/media/cache/resolve/472x472_fit/5493565707a72c7342335013/25757d0ded58a5264acfaace7a019f65.jpeg)
![MONICA ZERINGUE, Matador [detail], 2007](https://www.jonathanferraragallery.com/media/cache/resolve/472x472_fit/5493565707a72c7342335013/c1da9a2884902efafe1f233c6e7636be.jpeg)
![MONICA ZERINGUE, Matador [reverse view], 2007](https://www.jonathanferraragallery.com/media/cache/resolve/472x472_fit/5493565707a72c7342335013/99b2045a6b63bb7a8b66908779ec631c.jpeg)
Inspiration in Isolation
Works from Canceled and Postponed Exhibitions + Works made in Quarantine
November 4 – December 19, 2020
[ New Orleans, LA ::: b.1964]
MONICA ZERINGUE received her Masters of Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans in 2006, and her BA in 1993. In 1999 she was awarded the Prix de l'Acadamie de Paris, Societe Internationale des Beaux-Arts. She has exhibited her work at the Meadows Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Center, and the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art with a solo exhibition, as well as numerous gallery solo exhibitions in New Orleans since 1999. Her artwork was featured in the New American Paintings 2011 and 2013. Her drawings and paintings have been exhibited in group exhibitions throughout the United States, including the recent Crescent City Connection exhibition at the Dishman Art Museum in Beaumont, TX. Her work has also been exhibited at numerous art fairs including: VOLTA 10 (Basel, Switzerland), Miami Project, Art Market San Francisco and Texas Contemporary (Houston). Most recently, Zeringue has been awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.
Zeringue's work is included in various public collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Diane and Sandy Besser collection, Frederick R Weisman Art Foundation Collection, Los Angeles, CA, the Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA, and the Arts Council of New Orleans.
STATEMENT |||
My drawings, which are typically on primed lined, incorporate fine graphite lines and shading, often with embroidered thread. The subjects are repeated versions of myself—self-portrait in multiples as an exploration of identity—existing in private spaces, impervious to outside forces. Their world is defined by the emptiness of the blank spaces. Hair is a primary focus, both symbolically and structurally. It binds the girls together and overtly wraps abound their bodies and surroundings, and often is the only indication of movement in the composition. Both the subject matter and the techniques are intimate and sensual, while conjuring feelings of displacement and stagnancy. But this complacency slowly gives rise to growth and change, or at least the potential for change.
CURRICULUM VITAE |||
[view full CV below]
EDUCATION
2006 Masters of Fine Arts, University of New Orleans, LA
1993 Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of New Orleans, LA
AWARDS and RESIDENCIES
2014 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant
Residency, Hermitage Artist Retreat, Englewood, Florida
2010 Artist in Residence, The University of New Orleans Center Austria, Innsbruck
2009 Artist in Residence, Louisiana Artworks, New Orleans, LA
Visiting Artist, Stephen F. Austin University, Nacogdoches, Texas.
2007 Artist in Residence, New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, New Orleans.
1999 Prix de l’Acadamie de Paris, Societe Internationale des Beaux-Arts
1997 Award of Distinction, “24th Annual Juried Competition”, Masur Museum of Art, LA.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Diane and Sandy Besser Collection
Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
Meadows Museum of Art, Shreveport. LA
Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA
Arts Council of New Orleans
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2015 Absence and Presence, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2013 Goddesses and Monsters, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2012 Becoming, Meadows Museum of Art, Shreveport, LA
2009 Gathering, Heriard-Cimino Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2007 Matador,Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA
2006 Becoming and Un-Becoming, Heriard-Cimino Gallery, New Orleans, LA
You may not leave the 2020 Louisiana Contemporary exhibit at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art clicking your heels and whistling a happy tune. That’s for sure. Many of the Bayou State artists whose work is included used the exhibit to express angst over society’s woes, from gun violence to racism to the coronavirus pandemic.
The 2020 guest juror, René Morales, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), has announced the awards for the 2020 edition of Louisiana Contemporary, presented by The HelisFoundation.
Presented by the Helis Foundation, Louisiana Contemporary is the Ogden Museum of Southern Art‘s annual juried exhibition featuring works by artists across the state. For 2020, 55 works by 56 artists were chosen by guest juror René Morales, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator at Pérez Art Museum Miami - including JFG artist, Monica Zeringue.
Monica’s studio has high ceilings, large windows, and wood floors that don’t mind spilt paint.
The moon and its phases are the focus of the newest series, titled Absence and Presence, by New Orleans artist Monica Zeringue.
It is always around but you can't always see it. Its presence ebbs and flows; it can be big and bloody, or barely visible and pale as driven snow. The moon is linked to madness and witchcraft--as well as to women, so it fits neatly into Monica Zeringue's Goddesses and Monsters series where female figures mingle with lunar mysticism.
Even by the standards of large institutional survey exhibitions, the Contemporary Arts Center's Mark of the Feminine expo of works by local women artists covers a wide range of styles and visions.
Monica Zeringue is a New Orleans-based artist who has a knack for combining the weird and the wonderful. Her drawings contains images of nature, mythology, and human anomalies.
Monica Zeringue’s entire body of work within the show, five astoundingly intricate works in graphite pencil, four on primed linen and one on paper, boldly and successfully broaches the subject of female identity.
In "Goddesses and Monsters," Monica Zeringue constructs her own visual legend using elements of Greek and Roman mythology—mostly the labors of Hercules—as departure points for her signature self-portraits.
Go to any major museum and you see art based on mythology, from the Renaissance to modern times. Nobody knows why. in Goddesses and Monsters at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Monica Zeringue’s spectacular graphite drawings - nude self portraits of the artist in various mythic guises - may offer some clues even as they evoke contemporary performance art.
Monica Zeringue included in the list of 100 "new superstars of southern art."
Zeringue creates graphite drawings of her pubescent self multiplying across virginal, white pages like a cross between a Hindu goddess and the little demon girl from the horror movie “The Ring.”
Zeringue's drawings are all self-portraits. Using for reference photos of herself, often as a pre-teen, she renders multiple similar or identical figures in graphite in crisp detail.
New Orleans-based artist Monica Zeringue makes beautiful and eerily dreamlike self-portraits of herself as a pre-pubescent girl, often in multiplicity and arranged in impossible and surreal formations.
