Miriam Alarcón Avila Documents the Lives of Latinx Immigrants in Iowa Through Photography and Lucha Libre

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Miriam Alarcón Avila is a Mexican photographer, visual artist, and multimedia storyteller based in Tiffin, Iowa. She emigrated from Mexico City to Iowa in 2002. Her practice encompasses photography, installation, and educational engagement rooted in documentary and poetic aesthetics and centers on the stories of Latinx, Chicano/a, Indigenous, and immigrant communities across the Midwest. She works bilingually in Spanish and English.

Her origin story as an artist begins in 1985, when she witnessed the devastating earthquake that leveled parts of Mexico City. Walking through the destroyed city as a teenager, she felt a profound urge to document both the disaster and the human resilience around her. Her widowed mother couldn’t afford a camera. She began storing images in the vault of her memory instead. In Iowa, she found her way back to photography and to the communities whose stories most needed telling.

Her long-term project, Immigrant Luchadores of Iowa, centers on Latinx immigrants who were willing to share their stories but unwilling to show their faces. Her solution: The lucha libre mask. Each subject tells her about themselves. She uses their words to craft a luchador persona and hand-makes a mask that captures the heroic and poignant nature of their character.

Alarcón Avila’s work has been supported by numerous fellowships and awards, including the 2026 Big Field Fund, the 2025 Rapson Collaborative Grant Award, the Opportunity Agenda Narrative Fellowship (2024–25), and the 2023 Tanne Foundation Award. She leads workshops and artist residencies across Iowa, including with the Stanley Museum of Art and the Iowa City Community School District, and is a member of Women Photograph, Photographers Without Borders, and 5M Emprendimiento Latino. She is also co-founder of Colectivo Luchart and a contributor to Somewhere We Are Human, published by Harper Viva Books. To support her work, follow and share it.

Silver Lining commissioned this work from Miriam Alarcón Avila as part of the small.artists Fotografía series, supported by Wells Fargo.