Karina A. Monroy was born and raised in Southern California. In 2016 she received her B.A. in art and B.A. in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a daughter of immigrants she has found that she must navigate between two cultural worlds, choosing what to discard and what to embrace from each. As an artist and anthropologist, Karina aims to challenge and disrupt the elitist, male dominated fields of anthropology and art by incorporating traditionally Mexican and female domestic skills/craft into her work and research. Learning from previous generations of Mexican women has allowed for her to explore how definitions of femininity and womanhood have changed or remained the same through time.