Maya Janine D’Costa

Maya Janine D’Costa is a multidisciplinary artist whose work nurtures fragility and vulnerability, putting prejudice and permanence in the mind to rest. 

Her socially engaged practice in India has occurred in meat markets, public schools, rural fields, and forests with people most marginalized by the State.

Maya uses the studio as a site to live from within outward. Channeling erotics* as a refusal to be satisfied with suffering, she creates forms that remind us of our capacity for joy in a culture of oppression.

Maya’s paintings are akin to skin– a surface that brings her in contact with the world–  a practice of shoonya**. 

She nestles her objects with the lingam-yoni, zuni fetish, boli, and in making oneself a Body without Organs***. Maya sees these as enchantments for living meaningful lives. 

*Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotics

**The awareness that nothing exists by itself– everything exists in relation.

***Deleuze & Guattari’s Body without Organs

Instagram →