MAIA CHAO is an artist whose interdisciplinary practice examines various forms of labor and the regimes of value that organize them. Her projects have highlighted the affective labor of customer service; the administrative labor of sustaining an art practice; the conditions of labor created by a gallery’s legal contracts; and the labor of visiting an art museum as a BIPOC or poor person. She is co-creator of the social practice project, Look at Art. Get Paid.
Chao has shown at The Shed, Tufts University Art Galleries, Brown University Granoff Center for the Arts, the RISD Museum, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery at Parsons, and Cuchifritos Gallery. Recent fellowships include: Andrew W. Mellon Residency at Haverford College (2018), Asian American Arts Alliance of NYC (2019), Philadelphia Museum of Art (2019), Pioneer Works (2020), and Queer|Art (2020). Select talks and conference presentations include ICA Philadelphia, the Queens Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the CUE Art Foundation. Her work has been discussed in BOMB Magazine, The Paris Review, and Hyperallergic.
A Fulbright grantee, Chao holds a BA in Anthropology from Brown University and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
maiachaos@gmail.com / @maia.pologies