Mia is a farmer, an interdisciplinary artist, and an organizer, who works in fiber, ceramics, and multi-media as material and metaphor for ecological and physical embodiment.
They are driven by interrogating and betraying whiteness, compost of all kinds, the joys of trans embodiment, and building relationships with kin: human, non-human, and land.
Mia’s work knit threads and questions of accountability, relationship to land and place, and the way those play out on the level of the body.
The materials they use, such as fibers and ceramics, and the processes-- dying, glaze, and firing, offer ways to alter the substance at a chemical level—real and literal transformation. They are excited by the possibilities of interplay between the form and surface image. Both media have a history, connotation, and possible use as functional objects, and connote the body: in fiber, fabrics and woven structures connote skin, ceramics, bones, and wrinkles.
“for now we want to be clear that [joy] is not the same thing as happiness. A joyful process of transformation might involve happiness, but it tends to entail a whole range of feelings at once: it might feel overwhelming, painful, dramatic, and world-shaking, or subtle and uncanny. Joy rarely feels comfortable or easy, because it transforms and reorients people and relationships. Rather than the desire to exploit, control, and direct others, it is resonant with emergent and collective capacities to do things, make things, undo painful habits, and nurture enabling ways of being together”
— Joyful Militancy, page 29, carla bergman and Nick Montgomery
Education
2023
MFA, James Madison University
2014
BA, Tufts University
Awards
2022-2023
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Graduate Fellowship
2023
James Madison University Graduate Travel Fellowship
2013
2012
Dehn Summer Research Scholarship
Dehn Summer Research Scholarship
Exhibitions
Solo
2023
Heretic Territories: Spells for Fracture, Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art, Harrisonburg, VA
2021
Corporeogeo, Burrow Gallery, Brooklyn NY
2021
On The Face of It, Grace St. Gallery, Harrisonburg, VA
Group
2023
2023
2022
2019
2019
Key to Success: Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Baltimore MD
International Fiber Arts Festival: Design Museum Seoul Art Center, Seoul, Korea
Pop Up: ArtWorks Gallery, Harrisonburg, VA
Queer Ecologies Hanky Exhibition: The Future, Minneapolis MN, Pittsburgh PA
10x10 Exhibition: Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Hyattsville MD
Residencies and workshops
2023 Studio Assistant, Gasali Adeyemo's 'Traditional Yoruba Dyeing Techniques with Indigo', Penland School of Craft, Penland, NC
2023 TEXERE Independent Fiber Residency, Santa Maria del Tule, Oaxaca, Mexico
2022 SWALE house/ Urban Soil Institute Residency, Governor’s Island, NY
2022 Institute for Postnatural Studies Mutability & Mutualism, Virtual
2021 Art.Coop and Haystack Mountain Craft School of Crafts Study-Into-Action: The Cultural Economy We Want, Virtual
2021 Both/And Collective Somatics for Social Justice, Virtual
2019 Pyramid Atlantic Art Center Keyholder Residency, Hyattsville, MD