La Mona

A four-storey nude woman sculpture that is also someone's home.

La Mona — formally titled La Nueva Generación — is a four-storey reinforced concrete sculpture of a nude woman that doubles as the home and studio of its creator, artist Armando Muñoz García. It stands in the Colonia Aeropuerto neighbourhood, a working-class district east of Zona Río, and has been a Tijuana landmark since the 1980s.

The figure stands roughly 18 metres tall. Muñoz García built it incrementally over decades, living inside throughout, and has continued to modify and expand it. The sculpture has no formal opening hours — it's a private residence — but it's visible from the street and has become a pilgrimage destination for visitors interested in outsider art and the creative life of the border. García occasionally opens the interior for visits; asking politely at the gate can work.

Getting there requires a taxi or Uber — it's about 4 km east of the Centro along Boulevard Cuauhtémoc.

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A story
Artist Armando Muñoz García spent decades building La Mona — a giant nude female figure — as his home and studio. He lives inside it. The sculpture, completed in its current form in the 1990s, stands in the Colonia Aeropuerto neighbourhood east of the city centre, and has become one of the most recognizable folk-art landmarks in the borderlands. The hollow interior contains a kitchen, bedroom, and workshop; windows in the figure's torso look out over the surrounding streets. García has resisted repeated municipal attempts to have it classified as a building code violation.