Aleksandra Mir
Aleksandra Mir watched Neil Armstrong stepping on the Moon in 1969 when she was two years old and living with her family behind the iron curtain in Communist Poland.
’The Moon landing was a momentous and unifying event. We couldn’t cross the Western border but witnessed these far-far away images of humanity’s biggest leap together with the rest of the world population on the same type black-and-white TV’.
30 years later, as an artist living in New York, Mir sent Neil Armstrong the video of her work, First Woman on the Moon (1999). He replied with good humor and congratulations!
Mir’s Moon landing has since been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Royal Museums Greenwich, London, Vasarely Museum, Budapest and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo among 60 other exhibitions worldwide. It was also embraced by the Space Industry: UK Space Conference, Liverpool, International Space University, Strasbourg and International Astronautical Congress, Washington D. C.
Over the past 30 years, Mir has participated in over 370 art exhibitions in 40+ countries with a diverse body of work: drawing, collage, sculpture, land art, performance, film and publishing.
Transnationalism, aviation and space exploration are recurring themes in her art that she delivers with an underlying playful irony and pathos.
‘My 22m rocket Gravity built out of scrap was obviously never going to go into outer space. It was a metaphor for what holds us back – social, political and mental gravity’’
Since her family’s political exile to Sweden in the early 70s, Mir has continuously travelled and lived in diverse places: a tenement apartment in the East Village, New York, a palazzo in Palermo, Sicily, a commune on the island of La Gomera. In between long periods on the road, she also held art residencies and created site-specific work in San Francisco, Glasgow, Sydney, Mexico City and Antarctica.
‘The dadaists invented the artistic collage to describe a fractured society after WW1. I adopted a collage mentality as a way of creating unity between the fractured parts in my life. Cultural traditions are all manmade and made up of parts that can be endlessly combined into new stories and innovations. I take my liberty to use them all!’
Arriving in New York to study at the School of Visual Arts in 1989, with further studies in Cultural Anthropology at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, Mir eventually became known for her large scale collaborative projects and for her anthropological methods, involving rigorous archival research, oral history and field work.
‘Every location and circumstance has challenged me in new ways. I can be backpacking alone with a small drawing pad, striking a performative gesture with a friend, recruiting groups of collaborators to develop a large-scale exhibition together, doing a museum solo show with lots of resources or clearing red tape on an international airport tarmac – the mental effort to create a new work is the same’.
‘Being an artist is for me not primarily about making, but ultimately about observing. I am constantly looking at old photographs to see what has changed. I am looking at the world around me to try to understand how it has been put together, who made it and why. And then I add my two cents to it, simply as a marker of having been alive to witness’.
Mir spent 15 years in New York City and when she left for Sicily in 2005, she carried little but her library on Space and Astronomy with her, mainly as an anchor to her past.
‘When I arrived in Palermo, I soon befriended the gallerist Francesco Pantaleone who worked in his five-generations-old family catholic shop, selling everything from rosaries and candles to priest’s cloaks and large-scale church decorations, next to staging wild parties and contemporary art shows in his crumbling palazzo, close to where I lived in the historical center.
One day he visited my studio, saw me work on a collage and brought me to his shop’s warehouse where he handed me a box of antique communion certificates – a material gold mine!
That year I became obsessed with the concept of Heaven. I scoured the markets and sourced more antique materials from dealers in Italy, Spain, Ireland, Latin America and Eastern Europe, cut up all my Space and Astronomy books and the rest is Art History’.
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Aleksandra Prints are archival museum quality reproductions of originally hand-made collages.
The collages were created in the artist’s Palermo, Sicily studio in 2007-2009 and exhibited internationally in galleries and museums for the past two decades.
Today, most originals are part of private and permanent public collections.Aleksandra Prints started on the initiative of exhibition audience members who asked for affordable reproductions. These are now issued to the wider public as Print-on-Demand Limited Editions.
A collage combines elements from different sources into a new image and physical reality.
The physical materials for the original collages were sourced from antique dealers and second-hand bookshops. As such, and although Aleksandra Prints are made new on fresh and intact high quality paper, all original features have been reproduced, adding to the aged hand-crafted look, including a visibly aged paper patina and the authentic wear and tear of the original.
Furthermore, in creating the collages, the artist sliced and tore through the source materials on purpose, leaving clear paper-cut marks that are also reproduced on the print.100% human-made. No AI was used in the creation of these artworks.
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Giclée print on Hahnemühle German Etching paper
The word Giclée (“g-clay”) is derived from the French verb gicler, meaning “to squirt or spray”. It is a process that uses high-resolution inkjet printers, pigment-based inks and acid free papers to achieve a superior quality print with exceptional detail, vibrant color accuracy, and long-term durability.
Hahnemühle German Etching is a traditional mould-made copperplate printing paper. The white art paper made from 100% alpha cellulose is characterized by its extraordinary velvety tactile feel and its fine, clearly defined felt structure. The unique surface texture adds a very special touch to images, showcasing them in all their splendour with impressive three-dimensional effect and depth. German Etching is acid- and lignin-free and meets the most exacting requirements in terms of age resistance.
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Aleksandra Prints come in three standard formats, Small, Medium and Large:
A4 (S) – 21 x 30cm / 8.3 x 11.7"
A3 (M) – 30 x 42cm / 11.7 x 16.5"
A2 (L) – 42 x 59cm / 16.5 x 23.4"Please note that each original collage was created in an unique format and the image areas within the prints therefore vary. They are surrounded by white space to create the uniform print formats: A2, A3 or A4.
You can keep the white space, extend it with a mat or crop it out when framing.
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Aleksandra Prints are only available on www.aleksandraprints.com
Each print comes with a numbered Certificate of Authenticity capped at 100/100.Your print is only authentic if you bought it here (or from someone who originally bought it here) together with the numbered Certificate of Authenticity.
We are able to track all edition numbers to their original buyers so to establish provenance.
Please note that these are not original collages but museum quality reproductions.
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Aleksandra Prints does not offer framing but we recommend these three style options:
Minimalist – A ‘frameless’ clip frame in glass or acrylic in standard A4, A3 or A2 formats that match the prints sizes exactly. They are easily available in shops and can be ordered online.
Mediumalist – Adding a larger white or colored mat to extend the white space around the image area up to any preferred size. This framing method protects the print by allowing some air between print and glass. Select any custom-sized frame and profile from a framer of your choice.
Maximalist - New or Antique Gold, Bronze or Silver custom made frames with a different profile for each print. Visit a local framer to explore their profiles or source frames from markets and antique shops.
Please note that each original collage was created in an unique format and the image areas within the prints therefore vary. They are surrounded by white space to create the uniform print formats: A2, A3 or A4.
You can keep the white space, extend it with a mat or crop it out when framing.
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Aleksandra Prints offers FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE. Posted prices do not include local taxes, customs or import charges which are the responsibility of the purchaser.
Aleksandra Prints are produced in the UK, Germany and USA. Your print will be shipped from the nearest location for the most cost-effective and ECO-friendly solution.
Format A4 and A3 are shipped flat. Format A2 is shipped rolled in a tube. Our packaging is made of renewable and recycled materials and our delivery is 100% carbon neutral.We use a mix of shipping carriers (Royal Mail, DHL, UPS, USPS, DHL Paket, Warenpost) to ensure your orders arrives fast and safely.
Delivery Days on a best endeavour basis:
United Kingdom 6 – 10
Europe 6 – 10
United States 6 – 10
Canada 6 – 10
Rest of World 6 – 15
Damage and significant delaysIn the unlikely event the print arrives to you damaged, we will send a replacement free of charge. To arrange this please contact us at hello[at]aleksandraprints[dot]com with photos of the damaged print and its packaging.
We only offer replacement prints if the product arrives damaged or is significantly delayed (postage delays which could be considered normal, or delays due to items being held up in customs will not be refunded). What constitutes a significant time delay is at our discretion.
In either case we may request return of the print so that we can dispose of it. The returns will be at our cost, and replacements can be withheld until the returns are received by us.
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All orders are final – Sorry, no Returns. Fine Art Prints are fragile and do not benefit from excessive handling.
We produce and number each print as your order is received, which does not allow for returns or cancellations.
Please make sure to commit to an image and double-check the size before ordering.
We value your custom and thank you for your understanding and cooperation.Damage and significant delays
In the unlikely event the print arrives to you damaged, we will send a replacement free of charge. To arrange this please contact us at hello[at]aleksandraprints[dot]com with photos of the damaged print and its packaging.
We only offer replacement prints if the product arrives damaged or is significantly delayed (postage delays which could be considered normal, or delays due to items being held up in customs will not be refunded). What constitutes a significant time delay is at our discretion.
In either case we may request return of the print so that we can dispose of it. The returns will be at our cost, and replacements can be withheld until the returns are received by us. -
Aleksandra Prints are produced in several print facilities distributed between the UK, Europe and the USA, which means we can reduce air travel when shipping your orders.
The print facilities are 100% carbon neutral, which means they minimise energy usage, use renewables, and offset the remaining emissions by investing in renewable energy projects.
Our paper manufacturers only use resources from sustainable forest management areas. This programme ensures the preservation and protection of biodiversity, the renewal of the forests habitats and decreasing of the impacts of exploitation of forest areas for future generations.
All the packaging used for our customer orders are a mixture of sustainably sourced, recyclable or biodegradable materials.
‘ The Dream and The Promise was born as the result of a journey from New York to Palermo, the cities where the artist has worked over the past two decades. It was the flea markets and old religious shops of Palermo that allowed her to find antique holy cards, rare prints and souvenirs of religious ceremonies, which she then combined with images of space exploration to produce a visually striking and uniquely evocative short circuit. Aleksandra Mir reconfirms with her exhibition in Rome her surprising talent for the art of astonishing. This is also thanks to her wealth of irony, which allows her to fly high with incredible lightness’.
Massimo di Forti, Il Messagero, Rome, March 2010
‘Hi! My sister saw some of your work displayed in Italy and sent me photos. I am absolutely mesmerized and as a woman who works in science as a nurse practitioner for newborns but also is spiritual and deals with life and death and culture in the context of science, Aim at the Stars collage and Child collage from 2009 are awe inspiring. I feel like no artwork has ever captured how I feel about that juxtapositon between humanity and technology. Do you have this art available as prints to buy or any way for individuals to purchase it for display in their personal home? I can’t imagine not having it in my home! Thank you for your time and thank you for your art’.
Erin Kesler, Philadelphia, 2025
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