MIRA SIMONTON-CHAOSOME INFORMATION
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Mira Simonton-Chao is an artist, educator, and organizer based in the Midwest. Their current research and artistic practice focuses on institutional violence, epistemicide, weaponized data, and archives through an anti-colonial and anti-imperial framework. 

Their work against the archive has led to a practice of counter surveillance that examines the politics of place, sight, and scarcity, in which found material is used as a means of imagining abundance in the face of widespread dispossession. Through the pursuit of alternative modes of documentation and cultural preservation in collaboration marginalized and oppressed communities, they seek forms and means of memory work that do not rely on imperial and colonial tools of capture and subjugation and instead rehearse collective liberation. Their work is highly informed by the resilience of organizing movements for abolition, self-determination, and liberation in Chicago, SE Michigan, and the broader Midwest. 

Mira holds a Master of Art’s in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from the University of Michigan where they studied Ethnic Studies, Art History, and Ceramics.

They currently work with the following organizations:  Walls Turned Sideways, The Digs, Patric McCoy Legacy Project/Diasporal Rhythms, Groundcover News, Michigan Student Power Alliance, and NON:Opera Arts & Humanities.





MISC WORK — 
chronologically arranged 
to the best of my ability 




Keywords for an Archival Unraveling: Teaching & Learning With and Against Archives, Spring 2025



Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art Education at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Spring 2025

    Keywords for an Archival Unraveling: Teaching & Learning With and Against Archives is a contemplation on teaching and learning with and against archives across the boundaries of the university. The project utilizes an in-depth literature review and interview practice to expand on scholarship interrogating the archive as both a physical and conceptual product of colonial-imperial capture. Themes of anti-colonial and anti-imperial pedagogical theory, practice, praxis and archival history are explored in this project through conversation with five educators and researchers, all of whom work with archives in their practices: Josh MacPhee, Maria Cotera, Deirdre de la Cruz, Josh Rios, and Nicole Marroquin. Download Full PDF.