Maya Janine D’Costa
bangaloREsident-Expanded@Werksviertel-Mitte Kunst

© Maya Janine D’Costa

Maya Janine D’Costa is an interdisciplinary artist based out of Bangalore, India. Locating themself in marginalized spaces, they use drawing as a medium of friendship and experimentation in public sites. In the process of engaging with the community in everyday life, they reflect on their own position of caste, class and gender while addressing inequalities that are built into society. Their work negotiates the joys and tensions between community engagement and the search for individual expression. In a hope to merge the two, they seek to understand identity through personal experiences of the political.

Maya graduated from Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in 2018. In the same year, they worked closely with the students of St. Alphonsus School on Davis Road in Bangalore. Addressing the politics of caste and representation along with the children, their time around Tannery Road developed in them an interest and enquiry into the politics of meat in contemporary times. 

With the butchers of Murphy Town Meat market in Ulsoor, they organized a public meat festival ‘Mamsa Santhe’ in the market square in 2022. Alongside paintings exhibited inside the butcher’s shops.

They have worked as a visual artist in the grassroot organization Samaj Pragati Sahayog’s in-house media team based out of a remote tribal village in Madhya Pradesh from 2019- 2021. Engaged closely with women on issues related to microfinance and social empowerment. 

They have participated in the Next-Step Showcase at CKP Bangalore (2022), 17th IAWRT Asian Women’s Film Festival (2021), Serendipity Arts Festival Goa (2020), CMS Vatavaran Delhi (2018) and the Kochi Muziris Biennial (2016).