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

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.

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

Alarcón Avila’s 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. Her long-term project, Immigrant Luchadores of Iowa, launched with an Iowa Arts Council grant in 2017, 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.

The project earned her the 2022 Iowa Artist designation at the Des Moines Art Center and the 2023 Tanne Award. Her work has been exhibited at Hancher Auditorium, Drake University, and Western Illinois University. She is a member of Women Photograph and Photographers Without Borders, and a contributor to Somewhere We Are Human, published by Harper Viva Books.