Maya Ciarrocchi is a Canadian American artist whose work excavates vanished and inaccessible histories. Her previous career as a dancer/choreographer and theatrical designer allowed her to work across disciplines, from site-specific performance to large-scale projections in traditional and experimental theatrical venues. These past experiences inform Ciarrocchi’s interdisciplinary studio practice, which includes mixed media, alternative-process photography, video, and movement-based performance. By combining personal and historical narratives with spatial and embodied mapping, Ciarrocchi uncovers buried pasts and highlights how these erasures manifest in the present. The resulting two-dimensional, time-based, and performative investigations construct new, fantastical spaces from the residue of loss.

Ciarrocchi’s work has been exhibited in the United States, Canada, and Europe. She has been awarded residencies in the United States from the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Bronx Museum of the Arts, MacDowell, Millay Arts, and Ucross to name a few. She has received grants and awards from the Bay and Paul Foundation, Bronx Council on the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Franklin Furnace Fund, Jerome Foundation, Map Fund, Mertz Gilmore, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Puffin Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. In addition to her studio practice, Ciarrocchi has created award-winning projections design for dance and theater. Ciarrocchi earned an Master’s in Fine Art in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts, in New York City, and a Bachelor’s of Fine Art in Dance from Purchase College, Purchase, New York.