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, Michele 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. The collective is currently led by Gabi Ortiz (dancer), Lucy Pavez (actress and visual artist), Daniela Smith-Fernandez (visual artist) and Francesca Carella Arfinengo (visual artist). Miradorx Art Collective has widened the scope of reach to include trans and non-binary Latinx artists working in the prairies as well as women. The goal of the collective is to develop new works collaboratively, while fostering the development of individual artist practices. We seek to fulfill this goal by creating opportunities for parallel learning, experimentation and mentorship grounded in Latinx culture, woven together by shared language, culture and lived experience.
2023/24 Steering Committee
Chair: Francesca Carella Arfinengo
Co-chair: Gaby Ortiz
Secretary: Daniela Smith-Fernandez
Treasurer: Lucy Pavez