photo by Brit Magari
Biography
Maya Guy is a multidisciplinary artist based in Milan, Italy. She holds a BFA in Fine Arts from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, and an Academic Master’s in Art and Ecology from NABA Nuovo Academia di Belle Arti, Milan.
Guy’s artistic explorations span watercolor, video art, paper collage, installation, sewing, writing, and performance, often blending grotesque imagery with soft textures to challenge conventional narratives. Drawing from folktales, animal archetypes, and surreal symbolism, her work dissects the thin layer between the wild and the domesticated, questioning the invisible rules governing our existence. With a collage-like aesthetic, she merges physical and digital materials to create multi-layered scenarios that invite viewers to reconsider the stories embedded in objects and images. Sustainability and intuition guide her process: she repurposes leftover materials, embraces intuitive filmmaking and drawing, and trusts the mycelium-like connections of the world.
Her work has been exhibited in Milan (Casa Degli Artisti), Tel Aviv (Orly Dvir Gallery), and Jerusalem (Migdaleria). She has been an artist in resident at Space 118 in Mumbai, India (2017), and is currently serving as the “69th Bridge Guard” at the Bridge Guard Art and Science Residency in Štúrovo, Slovakia, where she is spending three months exploring the intersections of tourism, geopolitics, and human movement, framing her inquiry through an eco-social lens.
Artist Statement
I am a multidisciplinary artist, concentrating on watercolor painting and video art; but also spanning across paper collage, mixed media painting, installation, sewing, writing, and performance. For me, art is more than the object itself: what the artist makes in the studio. The “object” carries energy, thought, meaning, magic, a capsule of emotion and reflection. My work is influenced by eco-social and eco-environmental research, as a traveler and as an academic. Using science-fictionesque, surreal language, I talk about the human condition today: I try to find the thin layer, the merging point, between the wild and the domesticated, and question the “invisible” rules that surround us, and what could be the consequences of not noticing, not unravelling, the anti-cyclical system in which humanity lives today. This could be shown through post-apocalyptic, dream like scenarios, or through challenging my everyday relationship with my dog.
I use grotesque imagery in soft ways, working with different architypes, animals and folktales, researching symbols, and challenging their meanings. My work often has a collage-like aesthetic, mashing and sticking together images from different resources, allowing the viewer to have different points of view over one scenario, giving attention to the act of ripping apart and recreating. I play with textures and colors, be they the textures of physical materials or digital ones and give a lot of value to where my material has been resourced from: everything carries an energy, a story, a meaning deeper than what is shown on the surface. I often use leftover material, intuitive filming, intuitive drawing, take notes out of subconscious writing, wait for objects to appear. I deeply believe in the mycelium-like algorithm of the world.
Collaborating with other artists has always been a central part of my practice, be it with musicians, writers, and cinematographers: I love working with others while still maintaining my own private rituals and rhythms in my daily practice.
"How Doth", 10:14, Video made in the "Lab" course with Yehudit Sasportas