Faculty

Profile

Maya Ciarrocchi is a Canadian American interdisciplinary artist living and working in the Bronx, NY. Her work emerges from a background in dance, choreography, and theatrical design, disciplines where movement, image, and space are inherently connected. These experiences in solo, ensemble, and site-specific performance, along with the creation of large-scale video environments for both traditional and experimental theater, continue to shape Ciarrocchi's understanding of bodies in relation to place. Rooted in ecological and scientific inquiry, her interdisciplinary practice travels across textiles, video, mixed media, and movement-based performance to examine the fragile intersections between the natural world and the built environment. Through embodied and spatial mapping, she constructs speculative fictions informed by historical archives, revealing buried pasts and tracing how their erasures reverberate through the present and into imagined futures. These two-dimensional, time-based, and performative investigations construct new, fantastical spaces from the residue of loss.

Ciarrocchi's work has been exhibited in New York City, as well as nationally and internationally at galleries, museums and performing arts venues such as Abrons Arts Center, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Collar Works, Center for New Music, Derfner Judaica Museum, Field Projects, Gibney, Jack, Smack Mellon, and Wave Hill. She is a MacDowell Fellow and has been awarded residencies from the Baryshnikov Arts, Bronx Museum of the Arts, KinoSaito, Loghaven, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Millay Arts, and UCross among others. She has received grants and awards from the Bronx Council on the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Franklin Furnace Fund, Jerome Foundation, Map Fund, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. In addition to her studio practice, Ciarrocchi has collaborated with such artists as Wally Cardona, Ping Chong, David Cromer, Bebe Miller, Donna Uchizono, and Talvin Wilks on Bessie and Jeff Award-winning projection designs for dance and theater, including the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical The Band's Visit. Ciarrocchi earned an MFA in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY, and a BFA in Dance from Purchase College in Purchase, NY. Her work is held in the Brookfield Properties collection, the Derfner Judaica Museum + Art Collection, and the Kingsbridge Historical Society.

Degrees Held

Master of Fine Art in Computer Art - The School of Visual Arts

Bachelor of Fine Art in Dance - Purchase College

Research Interests

Video Art/Installation, Performance, Social Practice, Queer Studies, Environmental Studies, Textiles

Portfolio

Artist Website