Mira is an abolitionist artist, educator, researcher, and organizer based in Chicago. Their work explores spacial justice and global histories of resistance with a focus on the role state violence, censorship, and manufactured scarcity have had on our collective ability to imagine and enact other ways of life.
They are currently the Director of Operations at Walls Turned Sideways, Assistant Studio Manager at The Digs Chicago, and a teaching artist with REAL Youth Initiative.
Mira received a Master of Art’s in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from the University of Michigan where they studied Ethnic Studies, Art History, and Ceramics.
They have worked with the following organizations: Walls Turned Sideways, Real Youth Initiative, The Digs, Patric McCoy Legacy Project/Diasporal Rhythms, Groundcover News, Michigan Student Power Alliance, and NON:Opera Arts & Humanities
You can find more of their work on Instagram @coldandwetfromtheearth.
Spring 2025
Series of 5 saddle-stitch bound pamphlets.
- Keywords for an Archival Unraveling is a love letter to the vast network of educators, researchers, and artists whose work with and against archives has influenced my own practices as a researcher, educator, and artist. It is an invitation to think critically and rigorously with others about what it means to teach with and against archives in pursuit of an archival unraveling. I hope that the ideas presented in this thesis — via my conversations with Josh MacPhee, Maria Cotera, Deirdre de la Cruz, Josh Rios, and Nicole Marroquin and my own theorizing on speculative memory work and archival fissures — may serve as invitation to others to pursue other modes of unraveling in their own teaching and learning with archives. The archive will not free us, but perhaps through its gaps, its omissions, and its fissures we may glimpse other tomorrows.
FULL PDFs —
- On Enuentro — Maria Cotera
- On Interference — Josh MacPhee