About Me

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 Indonesian Chinese 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.” She most recently helped teach a painting and graphic arts apprenticeship as an instructor with the Zuni Youth Enrichment Project this past summer.

Mia’s poetry focuses on themes concerning femininity, mixed cultural identity, and mental health awareness. She won 1st place for her poem “Rez Life” in the 5th Annual Karen McKinnon Poetry Contest in 2021 at the University of New Mexico. “Rez Life” was selected to be published in The New Mexico Poetry Anthology 2023 edited by Levi Romero & Michelle Otero published by the New Mexico Press.