Artist’s career

Trained at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and the École des Arts Décoratifs, Mona Cara develops a practice that merges weaving, sculpture, and installation, where craftsmanship, industrial technology, and popular culture intersect. Through jacquard weaving, she creates monumental works that echo the tradition of historical tapestry.

Her vibrant textile frescoes oscillate between wonder and chaos. Drawing on references from pop culture — from Doctor Who to Peppa Pig — her visual language playfully subverts the codes of childhood to expose the fractures of our time. By deliberately introducing errors and glitches into the weaving process, she brings poetic ruptures into the mechanical rigor of the loom: patterns unravel, colors burst, and images blur.
Recipient of the Public Prize Crush (Gaël Charbau, 2021), she has taken part in the Lyon Biennale (2024), completed residencies at Villa Panthéon (Paris) and Solar dos Abacaxis (Rio de Janeiro), and exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum near Rotterdam. Her works have entered the French public collections of the MAC Lyon and the FRAC Occitanie.

In 2025–2026, she presented her first solo exhibition at Galerie Idéale (Paris), alongside shows at the PARCC in Labenne and the Centre d’Art Le Safran in Amiens.

Residency in Hong Kong - 2025

The residency Micromégas is designed as part of the cross-project initiated by Videotage - art center in Hong Kong, the Cneai = and the Consulat général de France à Hong Kong et Macao.
The artist is spending a month in Hong Kong at HART Haus, accompanied by Videotage

Mona Cara’s residency experience

“During my month-long residency on Hong Kong Island and its surroundings, my research focused on identifying textile practices, between craftsmanship and industry.
I was able to discover places such as CHAT / The Mills, a former cotton mill converted into an art and design research center, the Palace Museum, which presented a collection of Chinese imperial silk costumes, the Heritage Museum and its exhibition of Cantonese opera costumes, the Hong Kong Design Center, the Hong Kong Design Institute, a design school that partners with both the textile industry and traditional wedding dress artisans, M+, Tai Kwun, Hoopla, a knitwear accessories brand, and more.
With Yasmina Fraïne, a resident at Hart Haus, I went to lose myself in Sham Shui Po, in the last remaining shops selling fabric scraps, beads, and ribbons in the textile district, which are gradually being replaced by grocery stores and restaurants.
In her studio nestled at the top of an old industrial building abandoned in the 1980s, I met Kinyan Lam, a fashion designer whose practice focuses on craftsmanship and who works with a village of Chinese artisans to create dyes and embroidery.
Away from the hustle and bustle of the city, I spent an afternoon on a houseboat.
It was when I crossed the border to Shenzhen that I saw The Mandarin Company’s showroom and realized the impact of an industrial city with a large textile trading district.
Further afield, in Shanghai, where I spent a few days with Yasmina, I got a completely different glimpse of the Chinese city. We visited the embroidery institute in Suzhou, a city near Shanghai renowned for its tradition of silk embroidery. I also visited the Shanghai Biennale, which caught my attention with its title, “Does the flower hear the bee?”
In Macau, the casino city, I was struck by the discreet presences hidden behind the grandiose and spectacular, like the song of a cricket in a dimly lit alleyway.
Marked by the sprawling urbanism of the city, its pace and its effervescence, I plan to work on tapestries that are half-woven, half-beaded, evoking tangled networks, like the complex and contrasting, even stretched-out, connections between Hong Kong and other neighboring and distant territories. As a starting point: the huge towers I observed during my stay, which, reflecting each other, will draw distorted outlines. Here and there, strange constructions will appear, the carcasses of excessive and turbulent architecture, barely built and already under construction, a jungle of neon signs, a panda telephone, erected as a statue in the temple of “co(nso)mmunication” an, why not, a family of Shadoks, moving around on banyan tree roots!”