Maya Beaudry at Towards

Artist: Maya Beaudry

Exhibition title: Tree Museum

Venue: Towards, Toronto, Canada

Date: May 16 – June 22, 2024

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Towards, Toronto

Towards is pleased to present Tree Museum, an exhibition of new work by Maya Beaudry.

Within her practice, Beaudry explores memory and place, and the ways in which these elements are inextricably linked. Her work examines the often porous boundaries between interiority and exteriority, entropy and growth, and their impact on our relationship to the environments that surround us.

In recent years, Beaudry has been documenting the subsequent cycles of deconstruction and construction within her hometown of Vancouver. Through her works, buildings are understood as living sites of memory, in which the ever-changing architectural environment is not only a physical transformation, but a spiritual one, often echoing patterns of human life.

The works within Tree Museum consider the relationship between body, materials, and the built environment. Abstracted forms are interwoven with architectural elements. Bright swathes of colour radiate out and seep into one another. The works appear in a constant state of transformation, continuously shifting between abstraction and representation, image and object, becoming and unbecoming, all at once.

Tree Museum marks a progression in Beaudry’s practice. Starting with Flower Painting, and culminating in Skeleton, the artist charts her expanded way of working – washes of ink are applied to material and layers are built up. This surface can then be stuffed and sewn, and then finally cut away – creating a dynamic interplay between positive and negative space.

Throughout Beaudry’s work a metamorphosis occurs. Memory, material, and place are interwoven in a way that creates something wholly new. No longer rooted in what once was, these works are ultimately about what is to become.

Maya Beaudry received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She was the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts/CD Howe Award, and has participated in residencies at Triangle France in Marseille and the Kesey Farm in Eugene, Oregon.

Her work has been exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Polygon Gallery, Ashley Berlin, Contemporary Calgary, Unit 17, Wil Aballe Art Projects, Family Exhibitions and Liquidation World. She lives and works in Vancouver.