Maya Varadaraj

Maya Varadaraj is an interdisciplinary artist and designer. Her work is largely influenced by her upbringing in India; exposure to disparities of race, class, and gender without identifying with traditions that enforced them. Her practice brings to light the unproductivity and violence perpetuated by enforced decorum for women presented through paintings, collages, and mixed media installations. Varadaraj’s education in design and her interest in object theory has been critical to a steady engagement of material culture as a medium in and of itself; the agency of the objects she studies and creates dictate their form and placement visually. Her aesthetic vocabulary has been developed through referencing imagery connected to material culture from India; advertisements, popular calendar illustrations, and classic image making techniques such as painted photographs. She uses these classic images by disrupting their idyllic qualities.