Miriam Norris Omura is a textile artist predominantly working in the medium of weaving. She looks at ideas of memory through the exploration of layered portraits, pulling imagery from missing and unidentified persons cases, along with found and family photographs. Her weaving process creates blurred images, alluding to the process our brains use to retrieve memories and also layer them together. As a memory is recalled, it becomes layered and reshaped by the chemical process of retrieval in the brain. As memories are retrieved, they fuse with existing memories to produce a malleable recollection of an event or person.  

Omura’s recent exploration of missing and unidentified persons examines how we view, value, and define the lost and missing speaks to our society as a whole. In how we view each other and how we remember one another defines our humanity.

Biography

Born 1980, United Kingdom.

Omura received a BFA in Fiber and Material Studies from The Cleveland Institute of Art and an MA in History from Cleveland State University, she has also studied weaving in Kyoto, Japan. 

Omura previously worked in museum collections care in Ohio, South Dakota, and Alabama all of which have influenced her current studio practice in Birmingham, Alabama. She was a 2018 ASCA individual fellowship recipient and a 2019 nominee for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.