Mia Justice Smith
In Mike Brodie’s Failing, there is a photograph of a young woman sound asleep on a pink blanket. Skip ahead in the book and we see her now awake holding a cigarette on a makeshift bed in the back of a van. A little further up, she’s shooting up through her foot next to a Lisa Frank book, and on the next page there’s just her pregnant stomach under a tank-top that says “baby.” Across the vein on her right arm is the letter X, which stands for X marks the spot. This young woman is Mia Justice Smith, an artist in her own right whose photographs of hitchhiker life exude the romance and ethos of absolute freedom.
(written by Sofia Granados Dyer)
As a teenager, Mia struggled with anxiety, depression, her self-image physically and emotionally, and the culture of fitting in. Already exploring these topics in her art, drugs entered her life at the age of 18 and began to deform, or perhaps, transform those images to what the viewer can look back on today. Struggling with her developed addiction, celebrating and questioning love and wanderlust, she hopped her first train in 2021 and soon after met Mike Brodie.
Reflecting on that first ride, Mia wrote in 2022: “I don’t know if I had ever experienced a feeling like that, you know? All I knew was that me strung out, was definitely not the move anymore, and I had found a purpose.”
But that freedom was tragically cut short. In 2022, Mia lost her life to an overdose. She was 23 years old.
Then there must be a hell, where the spirits dance and sing
Photographs by Mia Justice Smith
Curated by Mike Brodie and Ian Ritter
picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom
437 W 16th St. FL 3, NYC
On View Oct 4 - Dec 12, 2025
