Maya Kramer’s work functions as a haunting antidote to the often hyperbolic and saccharine version of life portrayed in popular culture. Beginning with a concern for humanity’s precarious relationship to its environment, the artist uses surprising materials to render images from nature--coal and fake diamonds made into a night sky; a tiger skull constructed from laundry detergent; and a jungle crafted from the pages of The New York Times. The resulting pieces are a strange hybrid between the material and illusionistic, and the man-made and organic worlds. By scrambling different polarities, she seeks to portray a more inexplicable and nuanced reality than the one commonly depicted.
Maya Kramer, b. 1977, Washington DC, obtained her BFA in 2000 from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD and received her MFA in 2006 from Hunter College in NYC. She was based in New York City for nine years, during which time she worked in the curatorial department of the Guggenheim Museum and for private collectors.
In 2010 she moved to Shanghai and has since exhibited internationally in conjunction with institutions such the Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong, the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Holland, and The Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China, among others. She is the recipient of the Jacob Javits Fellowship, and her works have been featured in media such as Fortune Art, Randian, and Blouin Art Info. She is currently teacher at NYU Shanghai as an adjunct Instructor of Art History and also a regular contributor to Frieze magazine and Cobo Social.
