Continuing CALA’s commitment to engaging audiences through dynamic virtual programming, CALA Presenta > Charlas is a series of conversations between Contemporary U.S. Latinx and Latin American artists with Executive Director and Curator Alana Hernandez. The conversation series give viewers the opportunity to remotely visit artists’ studios and hear more about their practice through informal conversations. Emphasizing CALA’s commitment to U.S. Latinx and artists in Latin America, these artist conversations explore the dynamism that exists within the Latinx and Latin American art communities. Featuring artists that span geographic locations in and outside of the United States, CALA Presenta > Charlas are presented monthly via Zoom.

Mariel Miranda is a Sociologist, contemporary photographer, and founder/director of the Tijuana International Festival of Photography. Selected artist for the 2019 FONCA scholarship. She is a participant in the Programa de Fotografía Contemporánea (PFC) which in the last edition brings artists from across northern Mexico for monthly critiques, exhibitions, lectures, and events in Tijuana, MX.

She is particularly interested in the intersection between critical theory and radical ways of teaching and discussing photography. Her work incorporates photography’s history and its complex social, class, racial, and gender power relations that are currently at play in national and transnational spaces such as the U.S.-Mexico border. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Arizona.