Kalliopi Monoyios '00

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Kalliopi Monoyios

Kalliopi Monoyios '00

Visual Artist

Me in 50 words or less:
Kalliopi Monoyios is an artist working to mature the conversation around plastic. Fighting against a tide of reductionist arguments and politically motivated spin, she uses art to bring people back to a state of childlike inquiry, where we can see our collective behavior and societal decisions with new eyes.

Pronouns:
She/her/hers

Undergraduate Affiliations

Department: Geosciences
Arts-related Groups: Tigerlilies

Bio

Kalliopi Monoyios graduated from Princeton University with a degree in geology. She built her early career as a science illustrator for the prominent paleontologist Neil Shubin at The University of Chicago. Her illustrations have appeared inside and on the covers of peer-review journals such as Nature and Science as well as The New York Times best-selling book Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. In 2011, she co-founded Symbiartic, a blog covering the intersection of art and science for Scientific American. She served as president of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, an international group of visual science communicators, from 2020-2022. Now, driven by the conviction that science communicators operating in all spheres are a critical part of creating a scientifically literate public, she is developing new avenues of public engagement with conservation science via her own art and curated exhibits about the complexity of our relationship with plastic.

Featured Project

Patterns of Consumption (ongoing body of work 2021-present)

Artist Statement

Though much of the environmentally-themed work we see that deals with plastic is about trash and guilt, my work seeks to reach people by embracing the complexity of our relationship with the material and speaking openly about it. By treating it with devotion, like the precious resource it is, I am pointing my finger at consumerism as the root of our pollution problems, while honoring a material that makes modern life efficient and comfortable. I collect, wash, fold and sew food wrappers into quilts that could be handed down through generations as heirlooms. I fold plastic into thousands of interlocking modular origami pieces while meditating on my wish for a solution to the plastic pollution problem. I embroider yards of dental floss into shimmering geometric arrays to pose the question of whether Teflon — a material that is virtually indestructible in the environment — is best used for 30 seconds between people’s teeth or as an archival piece of art. Creating beauty from a workhorse material that society undervalues and treats as disposable is an act of devotion and hope. Only when we fully appreciate how integral it is to our lives and our livelihood can we imagine the nuanced and complex solutions that will move us forward into the next era of innovation.

I would like to share my expertise with:

  • Alumni

  • Students

I would like to:

  • Speak on a panel

  • Conduct a workshop

  • Share advice via phone or coffee chat

Contact Kalliopi Monoyios