Maya El Nahal

Artist Statement

Through a multi-disciplinary materials-driven practice, I connect with place by exploring spiritual, social, and scientific ecologies. I rely on encounter and am heavily invested in process, using sculpture, movement, and writing to enact rituals for the under-celebrated.

Informed by a background in biomedical research and driven by a tentacular animist intuition, I bring the scientific and poetic together in unexpected ways to invite alternative perspectives and challenge harmful ideologies. Playfully and persistently undermining binary, there is a commitment to queerness in my practice. As a mixed-ancestry non-binary queer mother, liminality and hybridisation are far more real for me than separation and boundary.

Invested with care and betraying a devotion to chiasmata and in-betweens, my works communicate with non-human kin and reach for death as a gateway to Other. They represent my hope that we could seed a different future from the composted ashes of dominant culture.

Contact

mclreid@gmail.com

Instagram


Image credit: Cara Forbes

CV

Selected Residencies, Exhibitions, and Publications

2024
Abject Bodies
joint exhibition with Ames Truscott, SaltSpace, Glasgow
Intertidal, poem in Nature held me close and found no fault with me
Artist-in-Residence, Birnam Arts
Correspondences group exhibition, Las Condes Cultural Centre, Santiago, Chile
Across: The Placenta as Organ of Transecology, article in Metachrosis Literary Magazine
Muestra Compuesta group exhibition, VETA, Santiago Chile
Trans Ecologies editorial board for special issue journal section
Hospitalfield Graduate Mentorship and Residency

2023
Correspondences group exhibition, VETA, Santiago, Chile
Correspondences group exhibition, Art Spot Korin, Kyoto, Japan
Monochrome and Travel open call exhibitions, Glasgow Gallery of Photography, Glasgow

2022
Lateral Lab: Correspondences, graduate virtual residency prize

2021
Who's Afraid of the Dark? Feature article in Art North Magazine International

2020
Imagining an Island open call exhibition, Taigh Chearsabhagh North Uist
Scottish Nature Photography Awards (second place Student category)
Overfall joint exhibition with Cara Forbes, Taigh Chearsabhagh, North Uist

2019
Uncovered Artistry open call Exhibition, GSA Intersectional Feminist Society, Glasgow


Education

2017 - 2021 BA Fine Art (Hons), University of the Highlands & Islands
2010 - 2014 BSc Biomedical Sciences: Neuroscience (Hons), University of Edinburgh

Using Format