Bio

M.I.N.D.P.A. (b. 1983, Miami) is a myth in the making, an artist whose influence is underestimated only because the world has not caught up yet.

Refusing alignment with any movement, M.I.N.D.P.A. is a category unto herself. Her work draws loosely from Pop and Nouveau Réalisme, but bursts past all stylistic boundaries with wit, ferocity, and visual invention. Operating in intentional obscurity, she has amassed a staggering body of work: thousands of paintings, drawings, sculptures, collages, prints, photographs, installations, garments, jewelry, and objects. It is a one-woman universe, restless, fearless, and highly original.

Had she chosen visibility, the landscape of contemporary American art would already be irrevocably changed. But M.I.N.D.P.A. prefers to work on her own terms: unbothered, unsupervised, and unrelenting.

Raised between Miami and La Paz, Bolivia, she was painting and sculpting before she could spell. A child prodigy and a visual omnivore, she consumed Sotheby’s Modern Art catalogues like comic books and honed her instincts playing Masterpiece rather than Monopoly. Her grandaunt, famed Bolivian sculptor Marina Núñez del Prado, was her first proof that art could be monumental, and she has never looked back.

Educated at Georgetown University (Magna Cum Laude, Studio Art Minor), M.I.N.D.P.A. developed a multidisciplinary practice across drawing, ceramics, painting, design, and sculpture. She expanded her training at NYU and Atelier Terre et Feu in Paris, where her work became increasingly textured, abstract, and dimensional, always looking to escape the frame. She also studied photography at FIT and was a finalist in NYU MEISA’s “Battle of the Bands” concert photography contest.

Her accolades, including the Misty Dailey Award and NYU’s Outstanding Academic Achievement Certificate, are footnotes to a much larger truth: M.I.N.D.P.A. is not interested in chasing art world validation. She is rewriting its rules. With every piece, she challenges the limits of medium, form, and meaning, leaving behind the breadcrumbs of a revolution in progress.

If art had a secret weapon, this would be it.

In 2010, M.I.N.D.P.A. landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where a course in art direction at EBA unlocked a new obsession: miniature set photography. The result was her first photography series, Marissa Noir, a moody, cinematic exploration that hinted at the full-blown aesthetic world she was beginning to build.

The following year, she returned to Key Biscayne, Florida, continuing her work with miniatures and expanding her painting techniques using acrylic gels and pastes. But it was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, of all places, that her practice exploded.

Settling in the Historic Third Ward, the city’s creative nerve center, M.I.N.D.P.A. immersed herself in installation, pop-up design, glass sculpture, photography, film, and digital fabrication. She learned 3D printing and laser engraving at the University of Wisconsin, further sharpening her tools for visual disruption. Her work appeared in a blitz of exhibitions between 2011 and 2013, including Gallery Night, Show Business, Red Leaf Artoberfest, and RAW: Natural Born Artists, where her Red Carpet Divas resin sculpture series made its dazzling debut.

She created two more photography series: Isabelle La Belle and Friend or Foe, both infused with narrative, character, and visual tension. All three premiered internationally in 2012 at the Santa Cruz Book Fair in Bolivia, followed by a major solo show at Altamira Gallery in La Paz. There, she presented prints mounted on wood, immersive video, and installation. Her paintings were also featured in the 6x6x2012 exhibition at Rochester Contemporary Art Center in New York, while photographs from her installation A Series of Unfortunate Findings were included in the graphic novel Alien Invasion Epic published by Purdue University Galleries.

Milwaukee also saw M.I.N.D.P.A. branch into pop portraiture, wearable art, and philanthropic projects. Her self-portraits lit up exhibitions for the Coalition of Photographic Arts, and her work was auctioned at events benefiting organizations such as Pathfinders, Exploit No More, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. She wrote sharp, observant pieces for Art-City.org and taught art at Meta House through the Junior League.

Then came the beads. A chance visit to Milwaukee’s Bead & Button convention sparked a new obsession: jewelry. She dove in headfirst, learning wire wrapping, bead embroidery, polymer clay, silver clay, and resin. Her debut jewelry line premiered at Red Leaf Artoberfest at the Charles Allis Art Museum.

Her next leap was inevitable. One day, staring at her own paintings, she saw something else: fashion. She began translating her artworks into textiles, learning to sew, and ultimately enrolling in the Fashion Design MFA program at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She expanded her training at FIT in NYC and the Istituto Marangoni in London, Milan, and Paris. A fashion photography masterclass with Lara Jade and a charity-won internship at DKNY rounded out this electric new chapter.

In 2015, she returned to New York and launched her fashion label, Marissa Noir. The debut collections, Furry Cold and Rock Baroque, were unapologetically bold. Three looks were selected for a design contest and runway presentation; the full 20-look collection premiered at Plitz Fashion Week in 2017. One design was featured in Surreal Beauty Magazine, and her Logo and Art Fashion collections were sold through Amcon and Fashion 360 Magazine pop-ups. Her signature piece? A sculptural, stud-shaped handbag in black, grey, and silver, stocked at Flying Solo in SoHo. A stunning evening mermaid gown was photographed by Laura Dark in Ohio with a wolf as a sidekick in the photoshoot.

All the while, M.I.N.D.P.A. kept giving back volunteering with the New York Junior League’s Stanley Isaacs Artistic Journey committee, where she even brought in one of her heroes, Scooter LaForge, to lead a wearable art workshop.

From Buenos Aires to Manhattan, from clay to couture, M.I.N.D.P.A. is not just making art, she is building a multi-dimensional, cross-medium mythos. What began in obscurity is now quietly becoming an unstoppable legacy.

When the world shut down in 2020, M.I.N.D.P.A. made the difficult but decisive call to end her fashion label Marissa Noir. But retreat was never on the table, only transformation. She shifted her energy toward creating one-of-a-kind garments: hand-constructed pieces and bead-embroidered tops and dresses that had lived in her mind for years, finally brought to life in solitude.

But isolation was not just a production break, it was fertile ground for conceptual reinvention.

Out of pandemic monotony and existential absurdity came Groupie Doll, a high-concept alter ego born from the artistic lineage of Marcel Duchamp’s Rrose Sélavy, Cindy Sherman’s self-portraiture, and Lynn Hershman’s Roberta Breitmore. Groupie Doll was a private performance in public space: a glam metal superfan with a radically different persona and her own social media presence. What began as 80s-inspired selfies during lockdown evolved into a full-fledged identity. For three years, M.I.N.D.P.A. stayed in character, building a modest following of five hundred people while pushing the boundaries of performance, identity, and digital spectacle.

Eventually, like all good illusions, it unraveled. The real world returned. Groupie Doll was, in true rock fashion, canceled.

At the same time, M.I.N.D.P.A. continued experimenting with wit-driven graphic design, selling prints and merch on Redbubble emblazoned with her own deadpan mantras, like the now-iconic: “All this relaxation is stressing me out,” coined on a trip to Hawaii.

As the fog of lockdown lifted, she returned to 2D and 3D art with renewed intensity. She completed Wall of Fame, a striking series of fifty four black-canvas portraits of iconic musicians, followed by Royal Punks, a 30-piece watercolor collection where historical portraiture collides with pop culture in playful, subversive ways.

Never content to plateau, she took courses at the Art Students League of New York, New York Academy of Art, 92NY, Bronxville Adult School, and even traveled to Asheville, North Carolina for a movable art class. She absorbed new techniques like mosaic, felting, quilling, stamping, alcohol ink, bookbinding, decoupage, encaustic, paper marbling, weaving, silk dyeing, graffiti/mural, and advanced color theory, adding layer upon layer to her already overflowing arsenal.

Right now, M.I.N.D.P.A. is deep in her studio, executing a lengthy list of new projects using these hybrid techniques and quietly sketching the bones of her next fashion collection. What it will look like, where it will debut, or what medium it may explode into next is anyone’s guess.

But if her history is any indicator, it will not just be another collection.

It will be another dimension.