Art historian and aesthete. Mónika Zsikla studied Art History and Aesthetics at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of PPKE between 2003 and 2009. Between 2015 and 2018, she continued her studies in the Aesthetics PhD programme at the Doctoral School of Philosophical Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of ELTE, where she defended her doctoral dissertation in 2024. The title of her doctoral research: International Monochrome Painting in Recent Decades - Theory or Practice? Case studies of the works of former advanced students of Zsigmond Károlyi's monochrome painting classes. Supervisor: Sándor Radnóti CHMAS, professor emeritus.
Biography
As an Ernő Kállai scholarship holder, Mónika Zsikla researched the works of Zsigmond Károlyi from 2013, and from 2016, she studied the works of Gizella Rákóczy. From 2007 to today, she has regularly been published in Hungarian journals as well as in national and international publications. Simultaneously, over the past decade, she has also curated and co-curated several contemporary art exhibitions. She has worked as the curator of the Budapest Gallery between 2017 and 2020. Since 2017 she has been a lecturer at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, and from 2020 to 2024, she was the curatorial director of Q Contemporary in Budapest. In 2022, she curated Zsófia Keresztes' exhibition "After the Dreams: I Dare to Defy the Damage" at the 59th Venice Art Biennale's Hungarian Pavilion. Her major recent curatorial projects include: Retrospective exhibitions of Ilona Keserü’s "MIND" (Q Contemporary, 2023) and Dóra Maurer’s "Thematizing Structure" (Vaszary Gallery, Balatonfüred, 2023-2024), "Mediating Time and Charm" (Q Contemporary, 2023), "The Image of Colour, the Mystery of the Image" (MODEM, Debrecen, 2024) and "Ilona Keserü: FLOW” (Muzeum Susch 2024–2025) exhibition.
In recent years, she has participated in several curatorial residency programmes, such as the East Art Mags programme for art critics in Romania and Poland, and the SPARK Art Fair Special Curator's Programme. She is a member of the Hungarian Department of AICA.
