Visual Arts |

Five Things I Did This Summer

Maya Taleon Thiersch

See it On Campus: Level 2

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Right between the stairs and the Rennie Hall

Five Things I Did This Summer (excerpt) (2022) Acrylic on canvas

With Five Things I Did This Summer, I experimented with archaeologizing fragments of my daily life and presented them with references to ancient mosaics as a way to explore themes of memory, class, and identity. In addition to the objects presented in the paintings themselves, my process of painting “mosaics” is also an exercise in rumination, meditation, and manifestation that transforms the bric-a-brac that surrounds me into monuments of a life being lived.

Rather than overtly working to disquiet my audience, I reference and abstract images of the body and other familiar mundane objects to reveal the states of strange, liminal, and absurd that exist intertwined especially within the most monotonous details of day-to-day life. 

Come Sit With Me ? (2022) Found and second hand fabrics
maya we love you, but you’re going nuts (2023) Acrylic on canvas
Undevelopment Proposal (2023) Photo prints mounted on paper
See the full series here

As part of my documentation of daily life, gentrification in Vancouver has also become a recurring motif as I witness the slow changes occurring in my communities.

Collected flip phone footage from around the Lonsdale North Vancouver neighbourhood. (Content warning- mild animal gore)
Pickup only (2023) Mixed media
untitled (write viktoria letter) (2022) Acrylic on canvas

Maya Taleon Thiersch

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(he/they)

I am a queer mixed Filipino artist raised in Vancouver whose practice explores a range of themes including identity, love and longing, and matters of the everyday.

Through painting, sculpture, and lens based media, I work to create monuments for the precarious and otherwise unremarkable suburban settings I find myself in, and seek out the absurdity that is nestled in the cracks of “business-as-usual” whether it be joyful, heartbreaking, or surreal.

Outside of my own art practice, I also do occasional work as a studio assistant and help run/curate a music and arts venue with some friends.

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