“Dance comes through abstract language. It's communication outside of language - it's own language. And I felt particularly in tune with how to create a visual palette for that. I’d been working in video - non-space based, ephemeral, digital. But I wanted to try making things I can touch.

It was really exciting to think about the physicality of making. I could get up and move around and use my body in a way that I hadn't in years. I started with drawing and making images that were tactile.”

Maya Ciarrocchi is a Canadian American artist who grew up in the Westbeth artists’ building of NYC. A child of painters, Maya’s first art form was dance. This form fueled a collaborative ethos which led to work within the modern dance and then theater worlds. Her dance, choreography, and later video projection work for theatrical productions all culminated in a personal image-making practice.

As a queer artist of Ashkenazi ancestry, Maya’s recent works have coalesced around the thematics of remembrance (Yizkor). These explorations have intersected with activism, forging a unique space and expression to consider displacement and erasure across social and environmental frameworks.  Informed by her background in dance, Maya’s dynamic picture-making presents an expression of simultaneous tenses - past, present, and future. With her ambitious cyanotypes  and other media she aspires to make the erased past visible, while also articulating a dynamic, embodied future.