Mariel Miranda
Mariel Miranda is a visual artist and sociologist based in Tijuana Mexico and Tucson Arizona. She works as the Head of Interdisciplinary Learning at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson where she leads community-centered programs that bridge art, critical pedagogy, and social justice. As an artist and organizer working across the U.S.-Mexico border, she designs intersectional initiatives in collaboration with museums, universities, alternative art spaces, and radical independent centers to foster urgent dialogues.
In 2022, along with her sibling, she co-founded the Communal Library Las Cumbres. The communal library is a radical, intergenerational cultural space rooted in the neighborhood’s history of mutual aid and self-organization. At the Biblioteca Comunitaria today there is a diverse array of books for all age ranges, tabletop games, sports equipment, art supplies and shared tables, as well as free Wi-Fi access. It is also where activities such as neighborhood walks, movie nights, paper airplane competitions, birthday celebrations and pokemon clubs take place.
Miranda’s work investigates labor, collective memory, affects, and tactics of resistance through archives, visual production, writing, teaching, and organizing. She often integrates speculative fiction, collaborative strategies, and site-responsive processes. Currently, she is conducting interviews with workers involved in electric vehicle production in her neighborhood and across other parts of America and Europe, with the aim of building an epistemic map around labor, organizing and future among international workers connected to shared production systems.
Her recent awards and grants include the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, the Artist Grant Award from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Gary Metz Research Fellowship, the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, the Andrew W. Mellon-Fronteridades Fellowship, and the Marcia Centennial Sculpture Prize, among others. She holds an M.F.A. in Photography, Video, and Imaging from the University of Arizona and a B.A. in Sociology.