Whether she’s shrink-wrapping rocks or creating videos of human taxidermy heads, Maia Chao ’13 has produced many experimental pieces over the span of her career. On Wednesday, she chronicled her work during the second event in the Department of Visual Art’s fall “Artist Talk” series.
Characterized by cheeky humor and metacommentary, Chao’s work fuses social science with fine arts and explores the intersection of performance, video and sculpture.
Chao graduated from Brown with a degree in anthropology before receiving her Master of Fine Arts in glass down the hill at the Rhode Island School of Design. During the lecture, she attributed the origins of her artistic journey to her experiences at Brown, specifically referencing her senior thesis, titled “Democratizing the Airways,” and her installation “Daniel and the Heads” in the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts.
Hailing from a line of artists, Chao explained that her family served as another inspiration for her artistic work. She shared a clip from her 2018 video piece “Gently Used,” during which she and her sister interviewed her parents, sold family belongings and grappled with personal questions of material excess and family history.
Though Chao has earned commissions from the Whitney Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, as well as from the Museum of Modern Art Education, she confessed to audience members that she often struggles with the creative process. She even jokingly showed an edited photograph of the MoMA logo that read “DoMA,” which she explained stood for the “dread of making art.”
Of the multiple pieces that Chao shared, two videos stood out.
During her residency with Times Square Arts, Chao directed “American Idle,” featuring live choreography performed in the middle of Times Square. The performance featured 20 actors across two three-by-three grids as they mimicked tourists and satirized the surrounding spectators in the city.
Chao also highlighted a video of “BEING MOVED,” a subversive commentary on observers of art performed at the Whitney earlier this year. The performance art piece portrayed a group of spectators loitering in an art gallery, overlapping repeated gestures with synchronized choreography. Hysterical and self-aware, the work toggles between being eerily relatable and loudly absurd.
Attendee Iris Wright ’23 — a teaching assistant for VISA 1240: “Art of the Book” and VISA 1210M: “Collaboration and Community in Print” — recalled seeing Chao’s work at the Whitney. “I was told she’s a really fun person, and I wasn’t disappointed,” Wright told The Herald.
“Really interesting talk,” Wright added, “really interesting projects.”
Kennedy Academia ’27, who is concentrating in visual art, was also impressed by Chao’s lecture. “She is just such a charismatic and eloquent individual,” Academia said.
“I found myself also laughing out loud throughout the talk,” they added.
Kendra Eastep is an illustration chief and a Senior Staff Writer for Arts & Culture. She is from New York City and concentrates in English and History. While she draws, she likes to drink peach tea and watch video essays.
