Mimi Onuoha

Mimi Onuoha is an artist and researcher who investigates the gaps and absences within data systems. Her practice centers on a critical question: what gets excluded when data is collected, organized, and used to make decisions about our lives?

Onuoha created The Library of Missing Datasets in 2016, an ongoing project that catalogs and documents the data that institutions choose not to collect or make available. This work forms the foundation of her broader inquiry into how data systems shape whose stories get told and whose remain invisible. As Executive Director of the Processing Foundation, she extends this work by supporting artists and technologists creating projects at the intersection of art, design, and technology. She is co-author of Data Feminism, published by MIT Press, which examines power structures embedded in data science and offers frameworks for more equitable approaches to data work. Her recent publication A People's Guide to AI provides accessible entry points for understanding artificial intelligence beyond technical jargon. Her forthcoming book Ground Truths (2025) continues her investigation into what data reveals and conceals.

Onuoha's work speaks to audiences concerned with representation, justice, and the hidden assumptions that underpin the systems shaping contemporary life. Whether examining algorithmic bias, data collection practices, or the politics of information, she offers concrete methods for recognizing exclusion and imagining alternatives. Her research and projects provide tools for artists, activists, technologists, and institutions to interrogate the data infrastructures they encounter and depend upon daily.