Mirella Maria is a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her dissertation examines how Afrodiasporic institutions in Puerto Rico, Brazil, and Colombia—including MAC en el Barrio in Santurce—use digital archives and curatorial practice to defend community life against erasure and displacement. A 2025 Transforming the Discipline Award recipient and 2026 Fellow of the CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice, she has presented at Harvard’s ALARI, LASA, and Munich’s Käte Hamburger Kolleg. She brings a decade of experience in Afrodiasporic institutions in São Paulo, including the Museu Afro Brasil Emanoel Araújo.
