ARTIST STATEMENT
My work begins in printmaking but pushes against its traditions of permanence, precision, and control. I use the language of craft (edition, matrix, archive) to examine the instability of the body and the systems that seek to regulate it. Through humor, desire, and material decay, I explore the intersections of consumption, sexuality, morality, and identity. Fatness, appetite, and discipline become recurring motifs, revealing the contradictions in how we moralize the body and its pleasures. By disrupting printmaking’s expectation of endurance and embracing degradation, I reimagine the medium as a living, fallible body, one that resists containment and insists on transformation.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mia Johnson is an interdisciplinary artist and historian born in Redlands, California. Mia Received a BFA in Print Media & Photography and BA in Art History from Kent State University as well as an MFA in Printmaking from Ohio University. She has since held residencies at Zygote Press and Columbus Printed Arts Center and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Mia currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri and works as Director of Morris Gallery and Assistant Professor of Art at Missouri Valley College in Marshall, MO.
© Mia Johnson