Miranda Smitheram
Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal), Canada
Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Aotearoa (New Zealand)
Dr Miranda Smitheram is an artist and design researcher, interested in hybridity and materiality. Originally from Aotearoa (New Zealand), she is currently Assistant Professor of Material Futures at Concordia University, Canada. Miranda’s research practice is tactile, haptic and embodied, and incorporates ancestral and contemporary methods to work with ecosystems, socio-cultural matter, and nonhuman collaborators. Through this she explores developing new mediated and hybrid materials, to contribute to sustainable, relational and Indigenous futures.
Miranda’s research moves between digital, virtual and physical, with a particular interest in the critical materiality that is revealed through the flux of these processes. These mediated materials take shape as textile forms, structures and digital artworks that question the interaction and agency of human and nonhuman, place and space in a anthropocentric context.
Dr Smitheram comes from an industry background in fashion and textile design, and holds a Masters in Design, and a Masters in Philosophy. Her PhD thesis explored ontology and aesthetics in digital and virtual materiality. Miranda has exhibited her work and presented research internationally in the United Kingdom, Aotearoa, Italy, Estonia, Finland, Australia,and Canada.
