Mónica de Miranda (b. 1976, Porto, Portugal) is a Portuguese–Angolan artist, filmmaker, and researcher whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses photography, film, drawing, installation, and archival research. Working between Lisbon and Luanda, her work explores memory, migration, post-colonial histories, and the ways in which personal and collective identities are shaped by place, displacement, and belonging.
Drawing upon landscapes, architecture, and lived experience, de Miranda creates poetic visual narratives that examine the enduring legacies of colonialism and the complex cultural relationships between Africa and Europe. Her films and photographic series frequently position the landscape as both witness and protagonist, revealing how histories of empire continue to resonate within contemporary social and political realities. Through carefully composed imagery and slow, contemplative cinematic language, she investigates themes of home, diaspora, ecology, and the possibilities of imagining alternative futures.
Research forms an integral part of de Miranda’s practice. She often combines archival material, oral histories, and speculative storytelling to recover overlooked narratives and foreground voices marginalised by dominant historical accounts. Rather than presenting history as fixed, her work embraces ambiguity and multiplicity, inviting viewers to consider memory as a dynamic and evolving process.Alongside her artistic practice, de Miranda is the founder of Hangar – Centro de Investigação Artística, an artist-run research and residency centre in Lisbon dedicated to fostering dialogue between African and European artistic communities. Through both her institutional and artistic work, she has played a significant role in expanding conversations around decolonial thought, transnational exchange, and contemporary African diasporic culture.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, the São Paulo Biennial, the Dakar Biennale, and major museums and institutions across Europe, Africa, and the Americas. In 2024 she represented Portugal at the 60th Venice Biennale with Greenhouse, an immersive installation exploring ecology, memory, and collective futures through film, sculpture, sound, and architectural intervention. De Miranda’s practice is distinguished by its lyrical visual language and thoughtful engagement with history, offering nuanced reflections on migration, identity, and the enduring entanglements of colonialism. By bringing together documentary research with poetic speculation, she creates spaces in which forgotten histories, imagined futures, and lived experience converge, encouraging audiences to reconsider the relationships between geography, memory, and belonging.