A Life of its Own

About

The significance of human relationships with our tangible, material world has always anchored my practice. A desire to strengthen these relationships is a continued undertaking. I have looked to objects to help me mourn, to make sense of things, to find a sense of order amongst the chaos. I have turned to our tangible world in an attempt to regain feelings of autonomy which had previously been stripped away from me.

This body of work began as a curiosity around ideas of preservation – expanding on methodologies for conserving, prolonging and adapting found and collected materials and objects. As a result, these sculptural works began taking shape as a glorification of the seemingly mundane, a shifting of the ordinary, a romanticised account of details in our everyday.

Whether found in the landscapes of our natural world, circulated and shared by unknown hands, or held onto through generations and bloodline, an object signposts to something other, something bigger than yourself.  

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Mia Mai (b.1997, Leeds) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work spans sculpture, installation, weaving and image-making. ​

Whilst working across mediums and disciplines, Mia’s practice is primarily engaged with the interrogation, manipulation and interpretation of objects and materials, particularly of which are handmade, naturally occurring and embedded in the everyday. Her research will often explore those that are found, unseen, displaced, excavated, collected or archived. ​

Interested in the notion that objects and materials have the capacity to trace human experience and ecological landscapes across time and place, Mia has a desire to create work which exists within, between and for both our built and natural world.