School of Art Galleries

For this exhibition I have compiled the evidence of my counter-cartographic response to the 1947 road trip that Simone De Beauvoir took through the American Southwest. Using her book “America Day by Day” as a map, I traveled 4200 km by car through the spaces that she visited, familiarizing myself with parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. I worked with photography, writing, video, public intervention, and performance as methods of processing my journey. 

This journey allowed for a political dialogue to grow between me–a mexican fronteriza artist–-and De Beauvoir, 73 years after her original road trip. Contemporary notions of territory, citizenship and landscape are explored in our dialogical fiction as I experienced the journey in situ, against the grain, and from a decolonial perspective.

Mariel Miranda is co-founder and director of the International Festival of Photography Tijuana (FiFT) a self-organized and feminist platform created for the undisciplined reflection on the image and its current modes of production. FiFT activities have been carried out in multiple spaces in México and the United States.

Miranda’s practice as a visual artist is built at the intersection of research, theoretical writing, production and the dismantling of images. Her work is primarily concerned with the visual and textual appropriation of archival materials to discuss issues related to the history of images: their epistemic inscription, their rhetorical narratives and their role in the complex social relations of power mediated by class, ethnicity and gender. 

Recent honors include: The University of Arizona Fellows Award (offered to the University’s highest-ranked incoming graduate students) and scholarships for Mexican students studying abroad from the Jumex Contemporary Art Foundation and the National Institute of Fine Arts.