WHO WE ARE
We are an artist collective of women, trans and non-binary Latinx artists who live in the Canadian Prairies. Our creative practice is rooted in Latinx culture and lived experience.
All members have deciding power and contribute labour and time towards initiatives that are mutually beneficial.
VISION STATEMENT
Miradorx Art wants to see women and gender non-conforming Latinx artists well supported to make art sustainably, with a confident artistic voice, who are widely recognized for their contributions to the artistic and cultural landscape in the Canadian Prairies.
CORE VALUES
Respect
Plurilingualism
Sustainability
Transparency
Open Communication & accountability
Consensus based decision making
Mutual support
Collaboration
MISSION STATEMENT
Miradorx Art Collective supports the artistic growth of its members. We learn from each other’s practices and seek mentorship from people we admire to strengthen our artistic, professional, and cultural practices. We celebrate each other and each member’s personal achievements, as they’d like to be recognized.
We create and seek opportunities to develop new work collaboratively, but also opportunities for each of us to focus on individual artistic experimentation. We foster cultural exchange with the broader arts community in the Canadian prairies through exhibitions, events and presentations.
We are committed to fair compensation for our labour and for the labour of artists we collaborate with, recognizing this as essential to having a sustainable artistic practice. We access a variety of funding sources, starting with each member’s monthly contribution all the way to government grants.
Miradorx is a grassroots collective governed through shared governance, where all members participate in decision-making, share responsibility for the collective’s direction, and are accountable to one another through transparent and consensus-based processes.
DEFINITIONS
Latinx refers people of Latin American origin or descent who self-identify with this term
Artist refers to anyone who is committed to artistic activity
COLLECTIVE BIO
Miradorx Art Collective, formerly known as Mujer Artista, was established in 2014 by Latin Canadian women artists Cecilia Araneda (filmmaker, curator), Praba Pilar (interdisciplinary artist) and Monica Martinez (visual artist). The objective was to provide mentorship to Latin American women artists on the prairies who were at various stages of their careers. The original multi-year project hosted three rounds of mentorship cycles culminating in art exhibitions, public screenings and artist talks.
Mentors were established Latin American women artists and art professionals including Praba Pilar, Monica Martinez and Cecilia Araneda (2014-2015), Carmen Aguirre (actress and writer) and Tamara Toledo (researcher and curator) (2019-2020), and Franci Duran (film) and Alexandra Garrido (dance) (2021-2022).
Artists that participated in Mujer Artista shifted through the years and included Carolina Araneda, Cecilia Araneda, Beatriz Barahona, Francesca Carella Arfinengo, Gabriela Garcia Ortiz, Alexandra Garrido, Monica Mercedes Martinez, Mariana Munoz Gomez, Lucy Pavez, Camila Schujman, Citlali Solis, Yolanda Paulsen, Caroline Dickie, Daniela Smith-Fernandez, Michelle Melendez Gallegos, Vanessa Harari, Esperanza Sanchez and Adriana Alarcon. Some of them were professional artists working in the field, while others were amateurs that developed their practices by participating in programming.
The collective exhibited new works at aceartinc with shows titled Speaking in Tongues (2017), Puesto/Place (2020) and The Cure/La Cura (2022). Each show featured a variety of disciplines, including performances, visual art and poetry readings.
Mujer Artista facilitated a post screening discussion for the WNDX Festival of Moving Image at the Los Angeles Film Forum in 2020.
In addition, the mentors were given opportunities to share their own work with the public. Mujer Artista hosted a reading by Carmen Aguirre at the Brandon Public Library in 2019, Tarama Toledo held a curator talk at MAWA (Mentoring Arts for Women’s Art) in 2019 and we co-presented Malena Szlam’s retrospective and hosted an artist talk at WINDX Festival of Moving Image in 2022.
We hosted a mini forum in 2022 titled “Mujer Artista: Fast Forward and Rewind” open to Manitoba’s art community as well as artists involved in the multi-year project to reflect on the impact of Mujer Artista and the environment from which it emerged and that surrounds it.
After Cecilia Araneda stepped down from a leadership role, existing members gathered to imagine the future of the collective. The group was reborn in 2023 as Miradorx Art Collective with the blessing of Mujer Artista’s founders to continue the mission. Miradorx Art Collective has widened the scope of reach to include trans and non-binary Latine artists working in the prairies as well as women.
In 2024, Miradorx collaboratively produced a multimedia installation called “Marchante”, which was selected as "Featured Work" of Winnipeg’s Nuit Blanche. In the same year, Miradorx received a Canada Council for Arts grant “Explore and Create”, which funded member’s individual artistic practices and culminated in public presentations in the spring of 2026.
Miradorx officially endorses The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)