Monika Lidman is the product of a bi-cultural upbringing. While her youth was spent mostly in Colorado, her world view and artistic sensibilities were highly influenced by experiences with her people in Piteå, Sweden. She grew up among “makers” who were perpetually engaged in the world of ideas and the activity of creating.
Monika is primarily a photo-based interdisciplinary artist. Her art is direct and often aimed at a nerve. Coming as she does from a family full of great stories, she sees storytelling and “story hearing” as the connective tissue between individuals and their communities. She mines the tricky underside of life, paring it with cultural expectations and measuring the chasm between the two. This juncture becomes an index, where dialogue about our humanity can begin.
Less interested in how art can illustrate theory than how it can aptly serve as both a healing force and a shield against encroaching social isolation, Monika’s art is based on the belief that through the sharing of common stories we can begin to re-humanize the world. Her work seeks the place where an autobiographical theme can jump the fence and connect with others, becoming more about shared experience than about the self. Her stories are as painful as they are common to others. The themes of resilience, health, work, relationships, coping tools and loss are nothing new under the sun; life is full of bittersweet ironies and imperfections. She believes that art can act not only as a means of processing both world and life events, but as a catalyst for change and a vehicle for active listening and understanding.
