MONICA TRINIDAD
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A photo of Monica looking away from the camera and smiling. She is kneeling with her arm across one knee. There is a large black circle painted on the white background.

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​Photo by: Hoda Katebi, Styled by: Production Mode

Monica Trinidad (she/they) is a queer Latine visual artist, communicator, and cultural strategist. 

A lifelong Chicagoan, Monica has created zines, graphics, mixed media posters, communication strategies, and plans highlighting youth-led, intergenerational, and intersectional grassroots organizing work in Chicago and nationally.

Her creative practice invites individuals to reimagine a better and more just world centered around experimentation, interdependence, abundance over scarcity, process over product, and following the guidance and leadership of directly-impacted communities. 
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Monica is a founding member of Brown and Proud Press and For the People Artists Collective, two Chicago-based collectives experimenting with the power of cultural organizing, storytelling, and dominant narrative disruption. Monica also launched the Lit Review Podcast with Assata’s Daughter’s co-founder Page May as a supplemental political education resource geared towards organizers and activists. She is also an emerging active member of Justseeds Artists' Cooperative. 

Monica holds a Bachelor's Degree in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was awarded the Civic Engagement, Community Service, and Community Organizing (CESCO) award. Her visual art has been exhibited at the National Museum of Mexican Art, DuSable Museum, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Hairpin Arts Center, and Sullivan Galleries, and her work has been covered in Hyperallergic, NewCity, Art21, Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, and other additional local media. Monica was named one of Windy City Times’ 30 Under 30 and honored by Women and Femmes to Celebrate in 2015, a community-gifted honor started by Project NIA and given to inspiring organizers and carried forward by past honorees. 

When Monica isn’t making visual art in collaboration with organizations, curating a new art poster series, or creating spaces for artists to network and support each other, she’s running communications for Third Wave Fund, a by-and-for community fund resourcing gender justice movements with rapid response and multi-year financial support across the U.S.

​You can find Monica’s most notable visual artwork 
on the cover of Mariame Kaba's New York Times bestseller We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, available everywhere books are sold—buy local!

Testimonials

“Monica was a guest speaker for Lisa Vinebaum's Social Fabrics class at SAIC, for which I was the TA. Monica is an incredible storyteller, with a fantastic ability to weave personal narrative with the history and practice of social movements, with an intimate focus on Chicago. She provided our students with a new lens for understanding intersections of identity, art, and activism, all the while breaking down abolitionist movement building into understandable and inspiring terms.”
​- Ruby T.

“Monica is wonderful! She gave an excellent talk as part of our panel on queer zines at UChicago's Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality. She's incredibly thoughtful and intentional about her work, and is a testament to the power of movement art and uplifting artists of color.”

​- Bea M.
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​​"Monica participated in a panel discussion about Art and Resistance for 
The Conversation, an ongoing series at Women and Children Bookstore in Chicago. She was engaging and informed, drawing on direct experience and a wide body of knowledge to connect with the audience very directly. We received great feedback on her contributions and hope to have her back again. There's clearly a wide variety of topics that she can speak to."
​- Zoe Z.
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