Monica Turner | The Way Out is In Deeper

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Last Updated: Apr 09, 2026, 01:25 PM

A sitting room model illuminated from within casting shadow on the wall

Monica Turner | The Way Out is In Deeper
April 18 - May 31, 2025

Monica Turner was Born in Kansas City, Missouri. In 2017, she received a BFA in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute. During her multi-year return to the workforce, she rediscovered her love of being creative, which encompassed both making and teaching visual arts. Monica is currently working to obtain an MFA from Southern Illinois University’s ceramics program.

Turner focuses on constructing environments that simulate memories of moments in time when it felt like the space the viewer was inhabiting was not made for them, or does not want them there,or both. Examples of the places described would be the back of an industrial warehouse, a poorly lit basement hallway, or a thoroughly used home that isn’t your own. Turner’s pieces use forced perspective and a combative relationship with gravity to disorient the viewer and utilizes highly saturated colors to display a heightened sense of reality. Turner used cardboard, paper, paint, drawings, and sometimes photorealistic landscape images to build the scenes for this work. Turner’s work often features a quiet absence of the figure so that the viewer becomes a part of the piece, invoking a sense of emotional vulnerability.