Installation view of Baguettes at The Hole, 2021.
Monica Kim Garza's Journey from Selling Chicken Wings to Showing Her Paintings around the World
The large and lovely ladies of Monica Kim Garza’s world hold particular allure. They lounge, sunbathe, twerk, smoke, fuck, lift weights, and sip wine. They also happen to be nude or scantily clad, their curvy bodies a spectrum of browns. Their expressions are often nonchalant, holding and challenging the viewer’s gaze, and at times, even mildly annoyed by the interruption to their revelry.
For her first solo exhibition in New York, “Baguettes”—on view through October 9th at The Hole—Garza began with the concept of sharing. “I was thinking about the people you break bread with, so it was inspired by friends and shared moments of eating and drinking,” she told Artsy during a phone interview from Atlanta, where she lives and works. The artworks depict Garza’s signature women drinking margaritas in the surf, bellying up to a crowded bar, circling a dim sum table, smiling conspiratorially over an intimate cheers, and slurping spicy Szechuan noodles. Generally drawn from past experiences and nostalgia, Garza’s mesmerizing, pleasure-seeking muses are impossible to forget, and her work unmistakable.