Raging wildfires. Drought. Climate migration.
Oak Cliff-based artist Eliana Miranda has been exploring the dangers of heat in her work over the last year.
“I've been looking at the ways heat has been used to weaponize the U.S.-Mexico border and how it's often used to hurt immigrants and asylum seekers,” she said.
With the L.A. wildfires and the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the relevance of Miranda’s work hasn’t been lost on her. Trump has already signed a series of executive orders on immigration and climate change, cracking down on border policies and withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.
Weeks before Trump took office, she said the president’s second term has motivated her to lean into her work.
“I need to come at this a little bit harder now and stay motivated to keep doing it, because I think now's the time where I need to voice my opinion on this more than any time before,” she said.
Miranda said the L.A. fires show how heat has a domino effect. Beyond just getting hot, she said it leads to food shortages, drought and ruined infrastructure.
That searing heat is reflected in Miranda’s work with the red, orange and yellow pixels of the 2023 U.S. Climate Shift Index noting climate-related heat. It’s a recurring visual that appears in works like Not a Drop to Spare, which depicts the Mexican military guarding bottles of water sitting on cracked desert ground.
The fiery pixels of the heat index climb across the painting, covering some of the vibrant army green of the soldiers’ uniforms.
“I thought it was jarring because a lot of those images I was seeing, the water was being guarded by the Mexican military, which is a scary thought because it's water, and it's a basic need that we all require as human beings,” she said.
The pixels appear again in Mas Agua, a series of paintings of people waiting in line for water. The figures in the paintings are made up of red, orange and yellow heat squares.
Then, there’s Miranda’s piece Yesterday’s News, a wood cutout of Mexico and Texas that’s been collaged with news articles. Each article has been carefully placed in the geographic area it references, making a mosaic of the exhaustive research Miranda has done on heat-related issues. On top of the collage of articles, Miranda painted the heat index in vibrant red and orange hues.
“We receive these articles and information so fast that we just read something and consume it in that moment, and then it's gone the next minute,” Miranda said. “It's like [people] forget that it's still ongoing, that these issues happen and they're still occurring.”
Miranda said heat-related issues tend not to be taken as seriously as other climate disasters, like hurricanes.
“For hurricanes, we have more of a visual for those things. You see the damage done to a lot of buildings and houses, all the flooding that happens in the aftermath of those hurricanes. However, heat is a silent killer,” Miranda said.
In fact, heat kills more people than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined, according to Scientific American. It’s estimated more than 1,300 people die in the U.S. from extreme heat each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Victoria Howard, chair of the Dallas Sierra Club, said art can bring awareness to climate emergencies.
“The more society is willing to see this reflected in all areas of their life – including in art, literature, and movies – the better. You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge, and having these issues highlighted allows everyone to have meaningful conversations about our current reality and what is needed for change,” she said in a written statement.
That’s why Miranda said she wants her artwork to help educate people, even if it’s just giving them a moment to stop and reflect.
“The way we are treating people and the planet is wrong,” she said.“So I really feel like it's necessary to communicate that as much as possible.”
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