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Home › News & Events › News › Mariel Miranda is bringing a dead bird back to life

Mariel Miranda is bringing a dead bird back to life

July 2, 2021

Yes, you read that right. Artist Mariel Miranda, second-year Master of Fine Arts candidate in the Photography, Video and Imaging program, will bring a dead bird back to life. Not once, not twice, but in 16 new, impossible ways. To pull off this feat, Miranda needs support. Fortunately she just earned the 2021 Marcia Grand Centennial Sculpture Prize, which is providing Miranda with up to $10,000 to complete her artistic vision.

For more than 30 years, the Centennial Sculpture Prize is given to an MFA candidate, specifically to support the completion of sculptural/3D artwork. The recipient is determined by a committee of staff and faculty via a proposal process. Previous honorees have included Benjamin Dearstyne Hoste, Marina Shaltout, and Karlito Miller Espinosa.

Miranda graduated with honors from the Universidad Autonoma de Baja in Tijuana, Mexico, with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology. She was raised in the Las Cumbres neighborhood of Tijuana, and her experience there informs her artistic work and research.

Sixteen Necromancy Wishes

Miranda’s proposed project, “Sixteen Necromancy Wishes,” envisions 16 ways in which a small, dead bird can be brought back to life using a taxonomic spell and visual arts. The Centennial Sculpture Prize will provide the support needed to bring the bird back to life, in 3D form.

“My aim in this project is to create an allegorical device to speak about the small and the silent,” wrote Miranda. “For the last 12 years I have lived the embodied experience of the daily threat of a narco-state that operates with impunity in my home country Mexico. Before coming to Tucson, I wondered about all those years now of the pain of death that passes through all of us. But also, and above all, I wondered about the immeasurable beauty of the small and silent acts of courage and love that are applied as tactics against all that terror — acts that we’ll never get to know.”

This project operates as a strategy for reframing the grieving process, a gesture to deal with confronting death and the exhausting desire to bring back those of us who are deceased.

“Mariel’s work shows a level of sophistication and maturity that is exceptionally advanced for an MFA student. I am so glad we can offer the support provided by this award in order to bring her project to fruition,” said School of Art Director Colin Blakely.

Using Eco-Friendly materials, Miranda will build 3 of these delicate and fantastic bodies and an experimental installation that acts as a home-site for them. With the help of professors, friends, and curators from the region of Tucson and Tijuana, she will decide the best place for the installation of her project. Possible sites include Biosphere 2 and The Botanical Garden at the Centro Cultural Tijuana.

“I am very grateful to the School of Art and to the sponsors who make possible the funding of this award that has been supporting the work of other students over the past years,” said Miranda. “I also want to acknowledge that the support of the UA Fellows during this first year, as a student, has been a fundamental factor that has allowed me to dedicate myself full time to the production and research of the four projects I have underway at the moment, the study time has been intense and powerful. I especially want to thank the PVI program/family/of which I am a proud member. The recognitions and grants that I have achieved throughout this year would not have been possible without the listening, advice, support, and friendship of my professors David Taylor, Sama Alshaibi, and Ellen McMahon as well as all my friends and colleagues who have been of enormous affective and intellectual support since the day I arrived at the University.”

Miranda has already earned much recognition and praise for her research and projects in her first year. Before arriving, Miranda was recognized as one of the University’s top graduate recruits through the University Fellows program.

The University Fellows Award is a prestigious fellowship offered only to the University of Arizona’s highest-ranked incoming graduate students. Fellows benefit from rich opportunities to forge new connections with people and ideas, while strengthening their foundational knowledge and professional preparation.

Within her first year, she earned yet another fellowship. This time through the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry. Miranda was named one of the 2021 Mellon-Fronteridades Graduate Fellows in January.

Mellon-Fronteridades fellows are community members, students, and academic professionals who engage in arts and humanities-centric interdisciplinary initiatives with border communities. These fellows foster and promote scholarship and creative activities that explore, analyze, and elevate the lived experiences and cultural resources of this region. Fellows create new ways for understanding border dynamics, and ultimately promote positive impact, in Arizona-Sonora border communities.

As a Mellon-Fronteridades Graduate Fellow, Miranda has been working on “Everything was Black and Yet, it Glowed,” an interdisciplinary work that explores translating her dream archive (audios of dreams she can recall from the previous night) that she has been collecting for the last 6 years into tangible forms. This project was also supported this year by the Graduate and Professional Student Council Research and Project Grant.

That was all within her first year. With two more years in the School of Art’s Master of Fine Arts program, who knows what will be next for Miranda.

You can follow Mariel Miranda on Instagram (@mariiel.mira) and Twitter (@marielmiira). Her new website will be ready in August.


Want to get involved? You can vote for your 3 favorite collages on our Instagram post to help Miranda choose which ones to make in 3D forms! Write a comment in this Instagram post with your 3 favorites of Mariel Miranda’s collages. We will update this story and Instagram to show which birds are chosen and the installation site.

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University of Arizona School of Art
1 day ago
University of Arizona School of Art

Our final VASE lecture of the spring will feature artist Walid Raad on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at the Center for Creative Photography. Details: vase.art.arizona.edu/walid-raad/

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Our final VASE lecture of the spring will feature artist Walid Raad on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at the Center for Creative Photography. Details: https://vase.art.arizona.edu/walid-raad/ 

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University of Arizona School of Art
2 days ago
University of Arizona School of Art

Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi presented to a packed house Saturday in Denver as the closing speaker for the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) Conference. The day before, speakers Clare Benson (MFA ’13), Tomiko Jones (MFA ’08) and Kaitlyn Jo Smith (MFA '20) and more alums joined Sama and Prof. Martina Shenal, grad student Nathan Cordova and others at Henry's Tavern for a reunion get-together! tinyurl.com/4p6bywwe

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Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi presented to a packed house Saturday in Denver as the closing speaker for the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) Conference. The day before, speakers Clare Benson (MFA ’13), Tomiko Jones (MFA ’08) and Kaitlyn Jo Smith (MFA 20) and more alums joined Sama and Prof. Martina Shenal, grad student Nathan Cordova and others at Henrys Tavern for a reunion get-together! https://tinyurl.com/4p6bywwe

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University of Arizona School of Art
4 days ago
University of Arizona School of Art

Ph.D. student Sedona Heidinger was among six presenters at today's "Collective" Art History Symposium at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Other speakers were Barbie Kim, Bentley Brown, Shen Qu, Gabriel Quick and Dr. Gregory Sholette (keynote). Director Colin Blakely opened the event, which also included a Collective exhibition at the Palo Verde Gallery (Grad Studios). Go to tinyurl.com/2p9eeshm for more details. Congrats to the School of Art's Graduate Council and Art History Graduate Student Association for organizing the symposium and exhibition! Arizona Arts The University of Arizona ... See MoreSee Less

Ph.D. student Sedona Heidinger was among six presenters at todays Collective Art History Symposium at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Other speakers were Barbie Kim, Bentley Brown, Shen Qu, Gabriel Quick and Dr. Gregory Sholette (keynote). Director Colin Blakely opened the event, which also included a Collective exhibition at the Palo Verde Gallery (Grad Studios). Go to https://tinyurl.com/2p9eeshm for more details. Congrats to the School of Arts Graduate Council and Art History Graduate Student Association for organizing the symposium and exhibition! Arizona Arts The University of ArizonaImage attachmentImage attachment
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University of Arizona School of Art
4 days ago
University of Arizona School of Art

Hooray to all our undergrads who presented their work at yesterday's BFA and UAUA exhibition reception at the Gross and Rombach galleries. And special thanks to Gallery Director lydia see! UAUA runs until March 24, and BFA ends April 3, so there's still time to see the shows! Arizona Arts The University of Arizona University of Arizona Museum of Art ... See MoreSee Less

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University of Arizona School of Art
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Art History Prof. Sarah Moore is a board member of the Institute for the Study of International Expositions (ISIE), which is holding its second annual online symposium March 23-24. 

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University of Arizona School of Art

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Newsletter March 2023 March 2023 Saracino receives prestigious fellowship Art History prof to work on 1st book manuscript at Huntington Library Jennifer Saracino spoke at Chicago's Newberry Library in
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