"Born in Chile, but living in Liege, Monica Cantillana presents ceramic sculptures extraordinary of truth.
Figures of men, women and children, so fair and familiar that they seem alive and speaking with you.
One invoice resolutely classical, but entered into a surprising gesture decomposed so that attitudes are even more readable, more touching, more impressive by their fervor human.
The work of firing, smoke, enamel gives them more of a patina exceptionally rich which gives a value to all archaic and thus brings us back to the highest tradition of the artisans of earth and fire."

Michel Ducobu, The Balastra Galery, december 2011

"Born in Chile, Monica Cantillana presents terracotta sculptures whose expression leaves no one indifferent.
Fascinated by the different firing techniques, it is with all her heart she works and, more often, to denounce human condition painful or absurd.
Influenced by its South American origins, it remains particularly attentive to any form of enslavement or dehumanization.
Behind anonymous faces and silhouettes sometimes hieratic, we feel a cry.
Those the empathy and generosity ... "

Carine Delhaye, "Espace Venta" Liège 2010

Twelve women exhibit at the Museum of Ansembourg
Mady, Cécile, Monica and others.
...A breath of femininity will add to the charm of Ansembourg, on the occasion of the International Women's Day ... Twelve women artists exhibit ...
35 to 84 years, they are called Mady Andrien, Patricia Bastin, Cecilia Bertrand, Danièle Bovi, Monica Cantillana, Nadine Fabry, Françoise Gresse, Halinka Jakubowska, Andrée Lothario, Claire Mambourg Jose Picon and Isabelle Van den Hove.
These twelve artists who are extremely talented and all from the ground of Liège.
The Council of Francophone women in Belgium has played a key role in the organization of this exhibition as curator of the museum, which opened wide the door Ansembourg Museum.

LA MEUSE - Bernard GHEUR (March 2006)

Exhibition "From Chile to Blegny-Mine" It centered around the theme of mine, stands, and it is anything but a surprise, in the multipurpose room of the tourist area Blegny Mine, which is intended as recall Paul Bolland, the governor of the province of Liège ... a memory center of mining activity.
This is ... an artistic look interesting issue here Claudio Sanz on the mining in Chile ..
Which also hosts jointly sculptures Cantillana Monica, a Chilean-born artist based in Trooz.
The latter highlighted at prope as figuratively, solidarity existing between the miners and the importance of an activity which represents 48% of Chile's exports.
Suffice to say that it is a true heritage that the public will have the opportunity to approach.

Le SOIR - Didier SCHYNS (2003)

A visit at Monica CANTILLANA’s house, allows upon entry to cross a lawn dotted here and there with a few sculptures…
in preview…
A few steps lead us directly to the workshop, a magical place where the works are created. Each artist's studio is different, this one is a sanctuary well illuminate and tidy: in a corner the oven, which she can fire her own works, clays blocks, shelves full of pots full of powder color for ceramic, scissors, chisels, anything that is essential to the emergence of projects.
Because she does not lack, projects, Monica Cantillana. Acharn worker, every day sugggère her, or more often imposes the desire to create, that is her very nature that only those close to her can understand.
…Over the years ... with multiple personneles or collective exhibitions, a metamorphosis, as happens to many artists, unconsciously guide her to the simple forms, groups, figures, bronze lost wax quite sytisés.
In addition, she often uses ceramic "Raku", ancient technique of firing and glazing used in Japan and which consists in immersing the sculpture in the sawdust out of the oven; a dangerous technology that gives remarkable results.
This artist is on the rise and is turning to new forms of expression that we discover soon, always with the same interest ...
In the garden, a gently light breeze stirred the ceramic birds perched here and there on flexible stems. Monica Cantillana femininity is expressed in all her work ...

WALLONIE_FRANCE N°43 - Geneviève DAVOISE(2002)

Monica CANTILLANA has launched new challenges, material and technique.
In her personal research and using Raku, she also produces works where you meet stylized and modern pieces.
The clay and its different firing techniques fascinate her.
In addition to her predilection for the clay, she works the stone material that is as noble as the clay, but the technique is it a new source of inspiration.
She affects in particular pastel painting, it is a new means of expression complementary to the oil painting.

Catalog of the Artist’s Route, Trooz (2000)

We knew the sculptures and ceramics of Monica CANTILLANA, often inspired by the South American origins of the artist.
Without misery, but with a strong sense of the matter, she created in the clay the attitudes taken daily with a look suitable to detect the load of destiny.
This is the same look of humanity that we can be found in the peinting that the artist also presents now.
Most are portraits in situations, portraits of ordinary people, caught in a corner of their living context, sometimes simple reflection in the glass of a window, sometimes at work, but also their family home.
Sober colors combine harmoniously the apparent simplicity of the subjects to enable us to grasp the profound dimension.

LE JOUR-LE COURRIER - Albert MOXHET (1996)

"The human being and her South American origins are at the center of her inspiration.
"It is as if, by shaping and firing, techniques borrowed from ancient traditions, she had managed to make sustainable what, without her, would have been only sketched, ephemeral, only fleeting and momentary.
If fire sanctifies, paramount gentleness, an integral part of her creation - remains ...
In all her work her origins appear.
We feel the wind come from beyond the Andes and the heavy shadows of raptors that, once they have taken flight, glide and only come down with regret.

Jo VERBBRUGGHEN International Art Critic