Photography by Victoria Gomez
Eliana Miranda’s art paints the story of climate migration.
The Oak Cliff-based artist explores human migration that results from ecological disasters such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and earthquakes and draws inspiration from images and stories of climate migrants found in media outlets such as newspapers, journals and internet articles as a way to memorialize the consequences of modifying the environment to fit the needs of society.
Her journey with art started at a young age.
“Art is something that I’ve been doing since I was a kid. I was always drawing,” Miranda says. “I really wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young, but then I learned the fundamentals of fine art, and I was learning how to paint and draw, and I really enjoyed it. I didn’t really care for the digital aspects.”
Her teachers encouraged her to pursue art in college, and she went to community college before transferring to Hamilton College in New York. She went on to earn her Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees from the University of Dallas.
“When I was in school for my undergrad at Hamilton, I was learning a lot about social issues and things like that,” Miranda says. “I decided I wanted to devote my work to those things. When I enrolled in grad school and I started working on my thesis, what I ended up making the work about was immigration issues because it was something that was really personal to me. I’m a first-generation American.”
She started focusing her thesis on the U.S.-Mexico border, and as she was researching, she kept coming across the phrase “climate migration.”
“It was really interesting to me because I’ve been thinking about immigration issues as a result of political turmoil or economic opportunities, but I wasn’t really thinking about people moving because of climate,” Miranda says. “I thought that was really interesting, and I kind of put it on the back burner until I finished my thesis.”
In 2020, Miranda said she was inspired to come back to Dallas to figure out what she wanted to make artwork about. She ended up volunteering to build houses for victims of Hurricane Harvey and started to think about the concept of a home and what it means to have to leave a home.
“That’s when I decided to completely devote the next few years to address climate change,” Miranda says. “So I came back to Dallas and started to walk through those things, and I started to focus on a lot of environmental disasters.”
One of the most challenging aspects of what she does is channeling her thoughts and passion into her physical art, she says.
“I just try and communicate what I want to say,” Miranda says. “I try to make my work as educational as possible.”
While her primary medium is painting, Miranda says she has been exploring installation work.
Photography by Victoria Gomez
She’s been in numerous exhibitions, including Latino Americans 500 Years of History at the Idaho State University, Contemporaneous Commentary: Voices in the Current Sociopolitical Atmosphere at the Wichita State University, Intersections at the Texas Woman’s University, and the AMOA Biennial 600: Justice Equality Race Identity at the Amarillo Museum of Art.
Miranda was one of the selected artists for the virtual residency with the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, TX. and the 2022 Texas Vignette. Recently, she was selected as one of the Cohort 5 studio artists at the Cedars Union residency in Dallas.
One of her recent works, “We’re Not Fine Here,” explores the weaponization of the environment surrounding the U.S.-Mexico border, disproportionately impacting the region’s poorest communities.
“Heat-related disasters south of the border have caused an array of issues, including drought and water scarcity, often becoming a catalyst for migration,” she says. “However, the influence of a changing climate is not only present in these regions but also manifests through the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, where heat, land and water are used as a weapon to hurt immigrants and asylum seekers.”
Miranda’s goals for the future include continuing to explore such issues through her art and expressing herself through more creative mediums.
“I’m starting to think about materials more,” she says. “I want to find ways to make art that’s a little bit more sustainable.”
