The Way Back
2018
Maia Cruz Palileo
Brooklyn, New York
Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.
About Maia Cruz Palileo
Maia Cruz Palileo is a multidisciplinary Brooklyn-based artist. Migration and the permeable concept of home are constant themes in her paintings, installations, sculptures, and drawings. Influenced by the oral history of her family’s arrival in the United States from the Philippines, as well as the history between the two countries, Maia infuses these narratives using both memory and imagination. When stories and memories are subjected to time and constant retelling, the narratives become questionable, bordering the line between fact and fiction, while remaining cloaked in the convincingly familiar.
Maia is a recipient of the Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Program Grant, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant, the NYFA Painting Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Award, and the Astraea Visual Arts Fund Award. She received an MFA in sculpture from Brooklyn College, City University of New York and a BA in Studio Art from Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts. Maia has participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York; Lower East Side Printshop, New York; Millay Colony, New York; and the Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans.
Program Participation
Painters & Sculptors Grant, 2018
Joan Mitchell Center Residency, 2015
MFA Grant, 2008
Website / Social Links
My current body of work began ten years ago when I asked members of my Filipino-American family to tell me stories about their childhood, where they grew up, how and why they moved to the United States. Painting has served as a framework for navigating these complicated colonial histories, and as a medium for re-imagination and decolonization.”
