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.
November 2024
Laser engraved acrylic, birch plywood, metal stands
- It is unclear how many data centers there are in the city of Chicago. Some sources note 111, others note 136. Ubiquitous Archives is a contemplation on the rapidly accelerating accumulation of data and exploitation of resources that form the physical structures that sustain what Andy Clarno and others refer to as a “web of imperial policing.” This web is fulfilled by the sharing of information, in the form of data, between different state, federal, and global agencies, from the Chicago Police Department to the FBI and the Israeli Defense Force, facilitated in part by data center and colocation providers. This piece draws on the loose formation of a data center, in which mass quantities of cloud data are housed in rows filling centers as large as 10.7 million square feet (Telecom, Inner Mongolia) and the most common data rack 42U houses 42 servers (the number of stacks before you), to evoke the innate physicality of data.
Enacting a practice of countersurveillance, Ubiquitous Archives focuses on two of the largest global data center and colocation providers with multiple locations in Chicago: Digital Realty and Equinix (who recently accepted a multi-million dollar contract from the Department of Homeland Security).
Archives as Action, Archives as Discourse
April 2025
Dittmar Memorial Gallery
There is No Disappearing Act
November 3 - November 11, 2024
Sometimes Space