diff --git a/Artifacts.toml b/Artifacts.toml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..ca912817
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Artifacts.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+[MLIRdist]
+git-tree-sha1 = "7a30d5d08131c8d72e002314ee933895a1bed594"
diff --git a/Project.toml b/Project.toml
index fc201332..bcd28f39 100644
--- a/Project.toml
+++ b/Project.toml
@@ -6,9 +6,9 @@ version = "0.1.0"
 CEnum = "fa961155-64e5-5f13-b03f-caf6b980ea82"
 LLVM = "929cbde3-209d-540e-8aea-75f648917ca0"
 Libdl = "8f399da3-3557-5675-b5ff-fb832c97cbdb"
-MLIR_jll = "a70bccb4-a5c0-5e2e-a329-e731972457e8"
+Pkg = "44cfe95a-1eb2-52ea-b672-e2afdf69b78f"
 
 [compat]
 CEnum = "0.4"
-julia = "1.9"
 LLVM = "5"
+julia = "1.9"
diff --git a/src/MLIR.jl b/src/MLIR.jl
index 0cd33a6d..9ddc6976 100644
--- a/src/MLIR.jl
+++ b/src/MLIR.jl
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 module MLIR
 
+include("get_artifact.jl")
+
 import LLVM
 
 module API
@@ -7,9 +9,12 @@ module API
 
     # MLIR C API
     import ..LLVM
-    using MLIR_jll
+
+    using Pkg.Artifacts
+    MLIRdist_path = artifact"MLIRdist"
+    const mlir_c = joinpath(MLIRdist_path, "mlir/lib/libMLIR-C.so")
+
     let
-        # ver = string(LLVM.version().major)
         ver = "18"
         dir = joinpath(@__DIR__, "..", "lib", ver)
         if !isdir(dir)
diff --git a/src/get_artifact.jl b/src/get_artifact.jl
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..0a6a1561
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/get_artifact.jl
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+using Pkg.Artifacts
+
+function __init__()
+    artifact_toml = joinpath(@__DIR__, "../Artifacts.toml")
+
+    MLIRdist_hash = artifact_hash("MLIRdist", artifact_toml)
+
+    if MLIRdist_hash == nothing || !artifact_exists(MLIRdist_hash)
+        MLIRdist_hash = create_artifact() do artifact_dir
+            @info "Downloading MLIR distribution (this can take a while ~700MB)"
+            temp = download("https://github.com/makslevental/mlir-wheels/releases/download/latest/mlir-18.0.0.2023121501+bf2b035e-py3-none-manylinux_2_27_x86_64.manylinux_2_28_x86_64.whl")
+            @info "Unzipping $temp to $artifact_dir (unzip should be installed on your system)"
+            run(`unzip -q $temp -d $artifact_dir`)
+        end
+        bind_artifact!(
+            artifact_toml,
+            "MLIRdist",
+            MLIRdist_hash)
+    end
+end