MFA University of Chile. Since 1993, when she obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in printmaking at the Catholic University of Chile, Mónica Bengoa has been a professor at the same university, particularly in the area of conducting creation projects.

During the last twenty years, her artistic production has revolved around the study of the nature of the photographic image and its translation into manual media, following procedures based on a system of technical and material restrictions linked to shifts in drawing, painting, engraving and textile work. Furthermore, it includes interdisciplinary concerns, such as those related to the incorporation of procedures and materials linked to intercultural recognition, as well as the intersections between the visual arts and literature, and the incorporation of the sciences, particularly entomology and botany.

Her visual arts career has developed both in Chile and abroad, participating in numerous solo and group exhibitions, biennials and projects organized by local and international curators, as well as self-managed endeavors.

Among her recent exhibitions stands out the retrospective Attempt at an Inventory, held at the National Museum of Fine Arts (2017-18) of Santiago, Chile, and the individual Things that are not books and that are often found in libraries, Nube Gallery, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia (2019); Exercices de Style / Exercises in Style, Isabel Aninat Gallery, Santiago, Chile (2015); Exercices de Style / Exercises in Style, Frost Art Museum, Miami, United States (2015); Einige Beobachtungen über Inserten und Wildblumen or Some Considerations on Insects and Wildflowers, Museo de Artes Visuales MAVI, Santiago, Chile (2012); Between the exhaustive and the inconclusive, Sala Gasco and The third lie, color variations, Galería Moro, both in Santiago, Chile (2009); The Third Lie: chromatic deflections, Project Space, Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, El Paso, TX (2008); Mónica Bengoa SCL – MAD – SCL, Carmen de la Calle Gallery, Madrid (2007); January, 7:25, Gabriela Mistral Gallery, Santiago and the color of the garden, Latincollector Gallery, New York (2004).

Her recent group exhibitions include her participation in Gran Sur: Chilean Contemporary Art in the Engel Collection, Sala Alacalá 31, Madrid, Spain (2020); Una imagen llamada palabra, Cerrillos National Center for Contemporary Art, Santiago (2016-17); Ejercicios de Transferencia: 9915 Collections, Alcobendas Art Center, Madrid, Spain (2015); Grado cero, 10 years of Chilean contemporary art, Centro de las Artes 660, Santiago, Chile (2015); Thread Lines, The Drawing Center, New York, United States (2014); The Storytellers: Narratives in International Contemporary Art carried out at The Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway (2012) and its version The Speakers: Narratives in International Contemporary Art, at the Luis Ángel Arango Library in Bogotá, Colombia (2013); Chili, l’envers du décor, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris (2010); Lo spazio dell’uomo, Fondazione Merz, Turin (2008); Poetics of the Handmade, MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA .; Daniel López Show, White Box Gallery, New York. Also noteworthy is her participation as the Chilean representative for the 52 Venice Biennale in 2007.

She has received a FONDART funding from the Chilean National Council for Culture and the Arts on eleven separate occasions between 1994 and 2014 –for individual and group projects to be developed in Chile and abroad–, including a Bicentennial Fondart funding for the Promotion of the Creation of Excellence in 2009. She has received DIRAC (Direction of Culture of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) funding from in 2002, 2005 and 2012, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant for 2003-2004 and 2015.

Among the main collections that include her work are the Contemporary Art Collection from the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain in Liège, Belgium; the Latin-American Art Collection of the University of Essex, London; the Contemporary Art Collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile; and private collections in Belgium, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and the United States.