Majoli’s practice examines the relationship between physicality and consciousness, as expressed through the documentary sexual image. Themes of intersubjectivity and temporality have informed numerous bodies of her work, together with decisive shifts in materiality. She has had solo exhibitions in New York at Galerie Buchholz (2019), Gagosian Gallery (2006) and Feature, Inc. (1998), Air de Paris, France (2014, 2010, 2007,1995), and Los Angeles: Hannah Hoffman Gallery (2023), L & M Arts (2012). Highlights from her exhibition record include Made in LA 2020: a version, the Hammer Museum and the Huntington Museum (2020); A Slow Succession with Many Interruptions (2017), the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Compass in Hand: Selections from The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawing Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009); Everywhere: Sexual Diversity Policies in Art, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea; Spain (2009); Eden's Edge: 15 L.A. Artists, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2007); Into Me/Out of Me, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2006); Supereal, Marella Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy (2002); LA Post-Cool, San Jose Museum of Art (2002); Scene of the Crime, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (1997); In a Different Light, Berkeley Art Museum (1995). Her Rubberman series was featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and the 2006 Berlin Biennial of Contemporary Art at KW Institute of Contemporary Art.
Recipient of the Mohn Career Achievement Award in 2020 (for Made in LA 2020: a version), and a 2006 Fellows of Contemporary Art fellowship, Majoli also received a Getty Grant from the California Community Foundation in 2002. She was appointed the Diebenkorn Teaching Fellow at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001 and was given a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Resident faculty at UC Irvine since 2006, she has also taught at UCLA, UC Berkeley and the Graduate Studies program at Yale University School of Art.
Majoli’s work is discussed in Monica Majoli: Primary Materials for Black Mirror (Galerie Buchholz and Air de Paris, 2021); Bound together: Leather, sex, archives, and contemporary art (Rethinking Art’s Histories, 2020) by Andy Campbell; The Queer Art of Failure (Duke University Press, 2010) by Judith Halberstam; Naked in America (Rizzoli, 2010) by Bram Dijkstra; Art—A Sex Book (Thames and Hudson, 2003) by Bruce Hainley and John Waters; Lesbian Art in America (Rizzoli, 2000) by Harmony Hammond; Opposite Sex: Gay Men on Lesbians, Lesbians on Gay Men (NYU Press, 1998) by Sara Miles and Eric Rofes; and Damn Fine Art (Cassell, 1996) by Cherry Smyth.
Majoli’s work is represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, and the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
