Monika Plioplyte

Monika Plioplyte (b. 1989, Kaunas, Lithuania) creates narrative collages combining printed and cut paper, photographs, and handmade elements to explore memory, language, and states of displacement and belonging shaped by her immigration to the US as a young teen. Drawing from Lithuanian Baltic folklore, female archetypes, and inherited rituals, she develops textile-inspired patterns as metaphors for personal and collective identity. Working across printmaking, photography, performance, and installation, her practice forms a pictorial interlanguage grounded in nature, folk symbolism, and the body.

Plioplyte's work has been exhibited at Hyde Park Art Center, Northern Illinois Art Museum, Monique Meloche, Columbia College Chicago, Boundary Space, and Mana Contemporary (IL); Rare Visions and Space_Space (CO); and the Davis Center at Harvard University, AREA Gallery, and Gallery Kayafas (MA). Residencies include MASS MoCA, The Center Program at Hyde Park Art Center, the Harris Barron Fellowship at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, ACRE, Vermont Studio Center, and the NEIU Art + Design Studio Residency. 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 holds a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives and works in Chicago, IL.