Mayah Lovell
Mayah Monet Lovell is a transdisciplinary artist, scientist and writer raised in DC and MD. Grounded in self-taught and ancestral education, she has exhibited works and performance at Gallery Y, 52 O St, Vox Populi, Transformers, Washington Project of the Arts, Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, and Current Space. As a working biologist, Mayah innovates concepts across visual, sound, performance, and written media, negotiating themes of somatics, land stewardship, body autonomy, cultural preservation, language, and challenges of technological commodity. Her work is researched and developed through abstract expressionism, post impressionism, performance, sculpture, and poetry, often intersecting their fields. Mayah has written publications across US and UK; Discount Guillotine, Test Pie Press, WPADC, Hermetic State, and Nueoi Press, and has taught workshops Writing an Ekphrasis and Writing Erotic Memory. Her curated literature sector dykes day, was awarded a Wherewithal Project Grant in 2022.
As a Black lesbian latinx from suburban-area D.C., her artistry roots in Caribbean transcendence beside Black queer ancestors and awakens by fantasy, somatics, and ritualism. She is a first-generation descendant of Caribbean servitude–her matriarchal lineage is birthed in “Canal Zone,” originally Rainbow City, Panamá by way of Barbados; and her patriarchal lineage is birthed in Kingston, Jamaica. Her ongoing research and exhibition, Body as a Landscape, is grounded in Caribbean histories where she learned the strength of women, wisdom of redemption, and survival in spirituality. This is developed through experimenting with layered textures, raw materials like synthetic hair, modeling clay, burlap, fiber, handmade paper, text, and sound.
Mayah has exhibited, and performed in the greater Washington-area, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, New England, and elsewhere to cultivate sustainable community and economic liberation among artists and creatives through events, mutual aid, and social justice.
Photo & Bio courtesy of the artist.
