Na Mira: NO SMOKING

MoMA presents Na Mira: NO SMOKING, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in New York. The newly commissioned presentation—her largest to date—will be on view in the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio. Drawing on animistic ritual practices and media histories rooted in structural filmmaking, Mira has created work that includes glitches in radio frequencies, infrared video, and holography. For this new commission, the artist directly engages the architecture of the Studio, which will feature spectral projections and a site-responsive sonic environment.

In creating this major new installation, Mira (Korean American, born 1982) was drawn to geographies marked by rupture, taking inspiration from the formal methods of fûkeiron, the late-1960s Japanese film theory that argued landscapes could evoke political conditions more effectively than conventional narrative or documentary. For NO SMOKING, Mira—who previously produced works at such military sites as the Dragon Hill Garrison in Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea—will present a suite of videos recorded in the summer of 2025 inside an empty cinema on the Fort Bliss army base and at the adjacent White Sands Missile Range along the US–Mexico border, which together make up the largest military installation in the US. “Systems of war appropriate, mutate, and weaponize sensory technologies to discipline perception. I follow signals that defect, sacred instants torqued to negative volume,” said Mira.

Organized by Sophie Cavoulacos, Associate Curator, Department of Film, with Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Curatorial Affairs and Department of Media and Performance.

Media and performance at MoMA are presented through a partnership with Richard Mille.

Annual support for programming in The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio is generously provided by the Wallis Annenberg Director’s Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art and by the Sarah Arison Endowment Fund for Performance.