Sleeping Huts
Mira Burack
About Mira Burack
The ground beneath my life and work is the grand, sensuous land where we live in New Mexico’s Ortiz mountains on the unceded land of Pueblo Peoples. Here, meaningful life experiences take place – sleeping on the soft earth with my family, gathering edible juniper berries and prickly pears, walking on the dirt and rocks in deep quiet. I strive to make my life a complete work of art, integrating the body, our essential possessions, relationships, home, and land into an aesthetic and meaningful whole that can be shared. Throughout my career, I have been exploring the site of the bed and the legacy of sleep as a portal to intimacy, comfort, rest, healing, pleasure, and connection to the earth. I use photography, textiles, sculptures, and installations to capture the essence of these phenomena. Projects often incorporate hundreds of collaged photographs, painted surfaces, soft and found objects, botanicals, installations, and communal space and gatherings that conjure a felt, lived experience. I am honored to be part of a generation of artists exploring self-care, domestic life, wild life, and our environment, and feel fortunate to spend my days learning from the high desert land, making, and enjoying my family.
About Sleeping Huts
How do we create space for valuing rest, stillness, deep breathing, contemplation, and connection to the land? We live in the foothills of the Ortiz Mountains in the high desert of New Mexico where I am initiating Sleeping Huts, a large-scale, land-based project that expands my artistic explorations of rest, sleep, and the bed into my domestic and natural landscape. Sleeping Huts is a site-specific project consisting of three permanent, artistic, cabin-like spaces in the mountains – one for a family, one for a couple, and one for a single person – completely designed around a unique, imaginative bed and a nurturing and sensorial sleep experience. There will be handmade bedding, plant-based sleep remedies, sound installations, and sculptural, personal care objects that create a complete, restorative experience. The Sleeping Huts will be spaces for personal retreat, restful contemplation, and surrender that connects visitors with high desert materials, plant life, and the natural elements in memorable ways. The project embodies values of the Shmita year creating a reverent relationship between the natural world and rest, allowing guests to release, reset, and reconnect with the land. At this time, with our personal and environmental health at the center of developing consciousness, the Sleeping Huts could activate important introspection, contributing to the healing and revisioning of our lives. We are in a swiftly-paced, technological era and a vulnerable pandemic and social climate. It is my hope to create resonant ways to re-attune to an intuitive and empathetic way of being.The Sleeping Huts will be accessible to people who really need this kind of renewal and care. I am excited to start developing plans and research, and collaborating with architects, artists, designers, and healers to bring the the project to life. (This project is a work-in-progress. The images reflect relevant projects.)
