Collection: Exhibiting Artist: Mia Sutanto's 'Anywhere But Here'

Mia Sutanto is a 2-D digital artist, painter, and poet who is originally from Naperville, IL. She was fourteen years old when she moved to her mother’s homeland of Zuni, NM. She is of Zuni Pueblo and Chinese Indonesian descent. The distance and disconnect she felt from her Indigenous culture growing up has been a motivating factor in creating her art.

She is a self-taught artist and started her art career through a 2-D digital art apprenticeship with the Zuni Youth Enrichment Project. In this program, she was taught how to draw using software on the iPad and learned how to sell and price her work. From there, she has been participating in prestigious Indigenous art shows such as the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, the Autry American Indian Arts Festival, and many others. She won a 2nd place ribbon for her work at the Gallup Intertribal Indian Ceremonial juried art competition in 2024 for her art piece entitled “Grief.”

Mia creates a range of contemporary art pieces with themes concerning femininity, mixed cultural identity, and mental health awareness. She feels that art has allowed her to develop a stronger connection with both of her cultures as well as helped her cultivate a voice for current issues she sees today. Mia is known to experiment with different styles but often uses bold colorful elements to highlight different states of mind or to support the strong messages in her work.