Monique Péan

Monique Péan (born c. 1981) is an American artist whose practice is focused on fine jewelry, sculpture, painting and furniture. Her work explores themes of space, temporality, identity, and origins, and makes use of materials such as fossils, meteorites, and sustainable recycled metals.

Early life and education Péan was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Great Falls, Virginia. Her Haitian-born father was a senior economist at the World Bank and a consultant at the United Nations Development Programme. Péan visited 20 countries as a child with her father, including Egypt, Israel, Turkey and Bulgaria. Péan's mother, a painter of impressionistic landscapes and portraits in oil, is Jewish of Russian and Polish descent. and decided to bring together her love of travel and art by visiting artisans around the world, learning about their cultures and art, and employing them to craft materials. She visited the Arctic Circle with a friend who worked with the Alaska Native Arts Foundation and during that visit was shown ancient walrus tusk fossils that prompted her to explore older physical objects. After learning about the amount of waste produced in gold mining, Péan decided to use only recycled gold and platinum. She was soon recognized by outlets like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal for her sculptural work and unique materials, including fossilized walrus ivory, fossilized dinosaur bone, and meteorite specimens

In 2016, Péan was invited to design the fine jewelry pieces in the film La La Land, working closely with director Damien Chazelle, Mary Zophres, and actress Emma Stone. Her jewelry has been worn by Michelle Obama, Natalie Portman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kerry Washington, Naomi Watts, Lupita Nyong'o, Mahershala Ali, and John Legend. In January 2021, First Lady Jill Biden wore custom earrings designed by Péan to the 46th Presidential inauguration ceremony.

Paintings Péan began painting in 2012, using her pieces from her Sut’ana series as inspiration. Péan used magnified photographs of the fossils in her pieces on large canvases, focused on their patterns when observed up close. She painted over the photographs to create an effect that would "mimic the fossils’ reflective and translucent textures". As of 2021, Péan was painting using pigments that she had created from fossilized dinosaur bone fragments, ground into powder and mixed with water and gum arabic. Three of her sculptures including Sikhote-Alin Vessel, were included in the exhibition, which revisited the 1969 Objects USA exhibition of the best crafts of the century. Her work has also been featured at art and design fairs and galleries including Art Basel Miami, PAD Art + Design, and Object & Thing.

Péan was featured in the book Coveted, written by Melanie Grant, a writer at The Economist. The book examines the "artistic impact of great design" via stories and interviews of fine jewelers.

Themes and process A recurring theme in Péan's work is the idea of "deep time".

Another key theme in her work is inspiration from travel, and reflecting different landscapes, architecture,

In 2016, she designed a t-shirt for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign as part of the Made for History initiative, which invited designers to create t-shirt designs supporting Clinton. In 2020, she designed a face mask embroidered with the word "Unity" as part of the "Believe in Better" range of fashion merchandise created for the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris U.S. presidential campaign in 2020.

Philanthropy Péan has supported Charity:Water, a non-profit that focuses on improving access to clean drinking water in the developing world, since the charity was founded. In 2015, Péan created a capsule collection of fine jewelry, honoring artist Walter De Maria and inspired by his 1979 piece The Broken Kilometer. In 2011, Péan was the recipient of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and Tiffany & Co. development grant. She was the recipient of Wallpaper's Best Jewelry Design Award in 2015.