Maya Mackrandilal is a Los Angeles-based transdisciplinary artist, writer, and cultural worker whose practice spans performance, sculpture, collage, and video. Rooted in ancestral memory and speculative futures, her work challenges systems of power by queering dominant narratives and invoking feminist mythologies. Performing as incarnations of Hindu goddesses, she inhabits the contradictions of the present—challenging whiteness, patriarchy, and empire through ritual and embodiment. Recent works, including Mother Portal and Ritual for the Future, explore motherhood, diaspora, and transformation, collapsing colonial time through a blend of South Asian sacred aesthetics, personal iconography, and popular culture. Her sculptural and collage practice continues this excavation, breaking open neoclassical forms to reveal the excess, violence, and beauty hidden beneath the surface. Mackrandilal holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was the recipient of a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship.

Image: Demerara Mandorla, 2020, Mixed Media - Steel (rusted with added red pigment and sealed with acrylic spray), jute rice sack, carved and painted calabash (gourd), chicken wire, wood, foam, spray paint, acrylic paint, Flashe paint, textiles, beads, flowers, steel screws, glue, Dimensions: 54 x 39 x 9 inches

(updated 2025)