Monika Plioplyte

STATEMENT 

Monika Plioplyte weaves together printed and cut paper, photographs, and other handmade elements into narrative collages that explore memory, language, and the fluid states of “in-betweenness” shaped by her immigrant experience. Drawing from Lithuanian Baltic folklore, female archetypes, personal rituals, and inherited stories, she creates textile inspired patterns that serve as visual metaphors for how personal and collective identities are formed. Through a multidisciplinary approach that includes printmaking, photography, performance, and installation, Plioplyte materializes a personal pictorial interlanguage grounded in nature, folk symbolism, and her own body as both subject and object. Her work examines the layered experience of inhabiting a human body and how relationships with the earth and with others inform our sense of self, memory, and belonging.

BIO

Born in Lithuania, Monika Plioplyte immigrated to the US in her early teens. She holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Plioplyte has exhibited nationally at venues including the Hyde Park Art Center, Northern Illinois Art Museum, Monique Meloche, Columbia College Chicago, Boundary Space and Mana Contemporary in Illinois; Rare Visions in Colorado; Davis Center at Harvard University, AREA Gallery and Gallery Kayafas in Boston. Residencies include MASS MoCa, The Center Program at Hyde Park Art Center, the Harris Barron Fellowship for Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. She has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the DCASE Individual Artists Program, the John W. Kurtich Foundation, and the Blanche E. Colman Foundation. Plioplyte lives and works in Chicago.