Through the symmetry disrupted by drips, Maya explores the gesture and softens it to form waves, curves and organic, shifting shapes. The vitality of her work is also found in the various textures, the transparency of certain hues, and these colours that bleed, like an overflow of energy, a vital flow that spills over. Her works, like an image unfolded along an axis of symmetry, mobilise brilliant colours and lively, supple forms that overlap and respond to one another from one side of the painting to the other.
The influence of modernist abstraction, in a contemporary urban version, blends with inspiration drawn from the motifs of Ukrainian folk art, repeated and structured like a weave. Her iconic improvised murals bear witness to the artist's obsession with symmetry, "perfect imperfection", puzzles and exterior/interior space, while evoking woven, knitted and embroidered works, rescaled to a monumental size. Maya Hayuk's vibrant pictorial abstractions are inspired by various references to Ukrainian Easter eggs, Mexican woven blankets, mandalas, and other references drawn from kinetic art.
Who is Maya Hayuk?
Born in 1969 in Baltimore to Ukrainian refugee parents, Maya Hayuk lives in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, she also studied at the University of Odessa in Ukraine. Her very recognisable work draws on the textile tradition and weaves links between Ukrainian folklore and the strong colour language of urban art. Her large structures, made of wide bands of colour that cross one another, are inspired by Ukrainian folk art designs (the Pysanka), mandalas, views from the Hubble telescope, holograms, and Rorschach tests.
Painter, muralist, photographer, graphic designer, gallerist, environmentalist and author, Maya has always collaborated with other artists, producing album covers, videos, stage sets, photographs and posters for M.I.A., TV on the Radio, the Beastie Boys, among others. Maya Hayuk has exhibited and carried out monumental on-site painted interventions all over the world, which have become iconic, appearing as sensitive cartographies in which a tension between control and chance is articulated.
An exhibition by Maya Hayuk | Curator: Elise Herszkowicz / Art Azoï; Credits: Maya Hayuk A joint project between Art Azoï and the Carré de Baudouin
For this first solo exhibition in France, the Carré de Baudouin and Art Azoï offer artist Maya Hayuk the opportunity to create most of her works on site. The exhibition will benefit from a substantial installation period so that the artist can undertake a contextual work inspired by the territory in which it is presented, as well as the two months she spent in Ukraine this summer. Maya explores many media, including paper, textile and video, among others, which allow her to sculpt her various geometric and symmetrical abstractions as she pleases. She will present a retrospective of 30 years of studio painting through works lent by her long-standing gallerist in Brussels, Alice Gallery. She will also address her commitment to Ukraine, her work of resistance and her exploration of her country of origin through embroidery, but also through video and the Ukrainian language.
The immersive character of her proposals will integrate with the characteristic and monumental spaces of the Carré de Baudouin, which will allow her to create "cathedral" works.
Did you know?
Since 2011, the association Art Azoï has worked to promote and disseminate artistic creation in public space and carries out large-scale cultural projects closely linked to the territories in which it intervenes, with French and international artists. The association aims to foster contemporary creation and structure its production to support artists on often multidisciplinary on-site projects: exhibitions, temporary and permanent works, programmed walls, cultural events.
A meeting and exchange space, the Carré de Baudouin is a cultural centre run by the 20th arrondissement town hall that promotes contemporary creation in all its forms. Set in a leafy setting within a former 18th-century folly, it now houses exhibition rooms as well as an auditorium. Open to all audiences and free of charge, the Carré de Baudouin offers exhibitions, organises events and regularly develops projects with local organisations. Each year, two to three exhibitions are organised with particular attention given to current artistic creation. Around each exhibition, a free programme is designed and offered in connection with the artists and exhibition curators: guided tours, meetings with artists, art workshops… Listed as a historic monument in 1928, the building has successively been a country retreat, an orphanage, a medico-social centre, a youth workers' hostel, and today a cultural centre.