ABOUT
Mira Burack is an artist living in the mountains of New Mexico on the unceded land of Pueblo peoples. She received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and BA in Studio Art and Psychology from Pepperdine University. Burack was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up on the coast of Maine.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., CUE Art Foundation in New York City, Bridge Projects in Los Angeles, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, New Mexico Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, Media Knox Gallery in Slovenia, Art Gallery of Windsor in Canada, Kunstverin Wolfsburg in Germany, among others. She received a Community + Public Arts Detroit grant for the Edible Hut, a community space with a living edible roof. She has been nominated for a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors grant and the Anonymous Was a Woman Award. In 2021, she received SITE Santa Fe's SPREAD 7.0 micro-grant and Hazon's Shmita Prize for her Sleeping Huts project.
Burack spends her time learning from the high desert land, making, and enjoying her family.
Plants, textiles, animals, family. The bed, the landscape, the table, the home.
I explore relationships that exist between humans, their possessions, and their environments. I am engaged by the materials and living beings in my daily life, and the interior and exterior spaces around me where meaningful experiences take place. How do the elements of daily life teach intimacy, engage the senses, provide comfort, heal, invite rest, and elicit pleasure?
Many of my projects explore the site of the bed and the legacy of sleep. The liminal resting body acts as a portal into an intermediary, horizontal state; this is a fluid place, characterized by the innate sensual movement of cloth. The bed is a rich, contemplative site to consider materials, relationships, and the experience of rest in a swiftly-paced 21st century.
Through photography, textiles, installation, and communal experiences, I share the physical, psychological, and poetic qualities of matter and space. Projects often incorporate hundreds of collaged photographs, painted surfaces, soft and found objects, and communal gatherings that conjure a felt, lived experience. My work straddles 2D and 3D, a space between woven textiles, the illusionary qualities of painting, a soft sculptural sensibility, and the values of land art.
I am honored to be part of a generation of artists exploring self-care, domestic life, and our environment. During this technology-saturated era, and a vulnerable pandemic and social climate, I hope that my work creates memorable ways to re-attune to empathetic, intuitive, and sensual ways of being that embody connection to each other and our surroundings.