Ames Yavuz announces representation of Mónica de Miranda
25 Nov 2025
Mónica de Miranda’s multidisciplinary practice examines the complex social, political and poetic relationships between bodies, territories, history and the earth. Spanning drawing, sculpture, installation, photography and film, de Miranda works on the boundaries between documentary and fiction. Her protagonists stand on frontiers, between self and other, past and present, in an oeuvre that fabulates narratives of resistance informed by embodied research into decolonial thought, practice and ecologies of care.
Installation view, Mónica de Miranda, Depth of Field Galerias Municipal do Porto, 2025, courtesy of the artist
With a particular interest in non-western cosmologies and informed by postcolonial thought and socio-political concerns, de Miranda’s interests range from the tensions around borders, immigration, and ecology to the urban landscape. The artist charts “geographies of affection” in her work, mapping multiple routes of crossings and belonging. Themes of nature, materiality, borderlands, spirituality and history permeate the practice.
de Miranda’s psychologically charged landscapes work to challenge the imprint of colonialism and explores connections between political freedom and ecological healing. Here we find identities multiplied through the motif of the twin and symbol of the mirror, archives revived through an attention to now derelict colonial architectures, and floriferous and lyrical natural compositions among which de Miranda’s human subjects find resilience. Engaging with the performativity of archival practices and public interventions, the artist’s installations reinterpret social relationships, uncover subaltern histories, and reveal the prevalence of fiction in institutionalized narratives.
The artist represented Portugal at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. The exhibition, Greenhouse, brought together the many modes in which the artist activates place, body and gaze into a vital living archive of history and liberation. A ‘Creole Garden’ formed an anchor for the exhibition, which staged sculptures, performances and workshops, to propose soil as a vector of decolonial and ecological engagement.
Installation views, Mónica de Miranda, Greenhouse, 2024, 60th Venice Biennale, Installation view, Mónica de Miranda, Earthworks, 2025, Wood, steel, plants, soil, Somerset House, London, 2025; all courtesy of the artist
“My work investigates the concept of the soil and the body as a container of memory, time and history.” — Mónica de Miranda
An iteration of de Miranda’s ‘social-sculpture’ project, Earthworks is part of 6th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, opening on 12 December 2025. Woven together from themes of ecology, collective memory, and decolonial thought, Earthworks reimagines the public space as a living, collective and sensory archive. The work at the Kochi Biennale is inspired by the ecofeminist Vandana Shiva and explores soil as a historical agent. Earlier in 2025, de Miranda presented Earthworks at Somerset House Courtyard to coincide with 1-54, the international art fair dedicated to contemporary art from Africa.
Mónica de Miranda’s (b. 1976, Portugal) work has been presented at major international biennales, including 16th Sharjah Biennial (2025), 60th Venice Biennale (2024), Lagos Biennale (2024), Bamako Encounters – 13th African Biennale of Photography (2023), 5th Biennale Internationale de l’Art Contemporain de Casablanca (2022), 12th Berlin Biennale (2022), BIENALSUR 2021 (2021), 6th Lubumbashi Biennale (2019), 12th Dakar Biennale (2016), and 14th Venice Architecture Biennale (2014) among others.
Solo and group exhibitions have taken place at Jeau de Paume, Paris; The Art Institure of Chicago, Chicago; Blanton Museum of arts, Austin; CAIXA Cultural, Rio de Janeiro; Bildmuseet, Umeå; MACBA,Barcelona; Gulbenkian, Lisbon; MUCEM, Marseille; AfricaMuseum, Tervuren; MAAT, Lisbon; MUAC, Mexico City; Barbican, London; Autograph, London; Frac pays de la Loire, Nantes; Uppsala Museum, Sweden; MNAC, Lisbon; Camões Cultural Institute, Luanda, among others.
In 2023, she won the Idealista Contemporary Art Prize and became a recipient of the Open Society Arts Fellowship – Art, Land and Public Memory, as well as the Grant Exposed Award – Torino Photo Festival. de Miranda’s work is part of numerous international collections, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London, MNAC – Nacional Museum of Contemporary Art, MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon Municipal Archive, all Lisbon, and the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah.
de Miranda will present new works at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 with Ames Yavuz from 3-8 December 2025.
Mónica de Miranda, Black Island I–IX, 2022, Chinese ink on cotton paper, 74 x 55 cm each, 96 x 76.6 x 4 cm each (framed)