Maya Hawk is a photo-based artist who lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. She will graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Arizona in the spring of 2016. Hawk has exhibited throughout Arizona and has received multiple academic fine arts awards including the Edward Francis Dunn Scholarship and the Memorial Lorena McDuff Scholarship. She is currently the resident photographer and preparatory intern at MOCA Tucson. Within her personal work she creates conceptual bodies of that work that comment on the world around her and examine family dynamics with a quirky sensibility. Having grown up in the southwest, a contemporary view of the desert is peripherally evident within her work.
She plans to move to Los Angeles once she graduates to continue her photographic practice.
The Three of Them is an ongoing photography series that I began in an effort to understand the relationship between a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter. These autobiographic family portraits are both comedic and introspective. The series is comprised of fabricated portraits, still lifes, and environmental images. The various approaches to subject matter work similarly as they are all purposefully constructed; the portraits are staged, the still lifes are arranged, and the environments are carefully framed. As an artist I am constructing a subjective image of family. I’m dressing both them and myself in specific clothes and intentionally pose them to create a particular narrative. In doing so, the portraits act as an imagined mirror. There is also an intentional symmetry within the series; an immediate comparison and juxtaposition of colors, objects, and poses.
The individual characters are a clear constant within the arc of the series, thus challenges and obstacles arise; this works like an analog for obstacles within our personal relationships. I’m resisting the influence of family dynamics by projecting an identity onto my subjects. While poignant and direct, I am responding to the fragility of life and difficulty of relationships with a whimsical sensibility.
To view more of Maya’s work, please visit her website.