Maya Yu Zhang
Maya Yu Zhang 张宇 (b.1991, Zhengzhou, China) is a non-binary community organizer, artist and filmmaker. They foster equity, inclusivity and intercultural empathy by creating systems, images, performances, stories and communities. Propelled by a simple desire to follow that which moves, Maya makes and weaves images of bodies in vulnerability, ecstasy, madness and abandon to compose an unapologetically queer cadence of seeing, being and healing. Employing ephemera, photographs, speech, performance, archival recordings and documentary footage, Maya instigates an archeology of bodily remains by excavating the hidden historical dimensions in the embodied present.
Maya’s solo and collaborative projects have received the Director's Choice Award at Black Maria Film Festival, the Best Documentary Short Award at Indie Memphis Film Festival, and Vanguard Award for Experimental Film at The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival. They have screened, performed and exhibited at Tisch School of Fine Arts at New York University, Kelly Writers House at University of Pennsylvania, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Knockdown Center, Anthology Film Archive and Helsinki Festival, among other places.
Awarded Grants
2024
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
Related grantees
Overview
Maya Yu Zhang’s project, Addresses Unknown, is a process-driven multimedia project aimed to transform the repressed grief in Asian American queer immigrant communities in the wake of rising anti-Asian sentiments, anti-LGBQA legislations, and generational trauma. This project engages a grief counselor and five core participants to undergo a collective mourning ritual through art-making. These five participants, who are Asian American queer immigrant artists, will embody the five elemental forces in traditional Chinese cosmology, Wuxing (五行), metal (金), wood (木), water (水), fire (火), and earth (土). In partnership with FORTUNE, a Philadelphia-based publication project assembled by and for queer and trans Asian publics, the first stage will launch a zine through a community event, distributing 300 free copies to the public.
