Mika Sperling is a photo-based artist. She was born the latest of eight children in the mining city of Norilsk in Northern Siberia, where her family lived for twenty years before moving to Germany, when she was one year old. She studied photography and book design at the Hochschule Darmstadt, FH Bielefeld, and the San Francisco Art Institute, where she earned an MFA in 2018 thanks to Fulbright and DAAD Scholarships. Her work is based in photography and writing, engaging questions she draws from her childhood with the goal of facing inner fears and overcoming trauma.