Monika Correa

Monika Correa (née Sequeira; born 1938) is an Indian textile artist known for her experimental weaves. She is largely a self-taught weaver which has allowed her to break free from the inhibitions of an academically trained artist and explore the possibility of textile as a medium of art.

Her textile creations are a part of leading collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis and Tate, London to name a few.

Biography Monika has completed her B.Sc. in Microbiology from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai in 1958. Later, she married the notable Indian architect Charles Correa in 1961. They had two children, Nakul and Nondita.

In 1962, Monika had accompanied her husband when he was called to teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). En route this trip, they traveled via Helsinki, Finland where she saw the traditional Rya & Ryijy rugs and was thoroughly impressed by them. This sparked Correa's interest and motivated her to learn weaving. Subsequently, in America, she got a chance to meet Marianne Strengell through György Kepes, a painter and professor at MIT. Former had then retired as the head of the textiles department from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Strengell taught Correa the fundamentals of weaving and gave her a design of the loom when the latter was returning to India.

Career After Correa returned to India in 1963, she got the loom built for herself according to the design shared by Strengell. She had also told Correa about Nelly Sethna, her former student who also lived in Bombay. Sethna had sent a young weaver to accommodate Correa with the basic setup. It was a research institute headed by Pupul Jayakar At the WSC, Correa met Indian modern artists like K. G. Subramanyan and Prabhakar Barwe. Banyan Tree (1984) Axis Mundi (1997–99) 2013 - Meandering Warps, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai

Group exhibitions

2019 - Taking a Thread for a Walk, Museum of Modern Art, New York 2016 - Rewind, Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka 2015 - Approaching Abstraction, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai