All Photos By Gail

With a diverse practice as a muralist, painter, photographer, gallery founder, and member of several artist collectives, Maya Hayuk (b. 1969) has worked internationally to bring vibrancy and movement to urban and exhibition spaces. This large-scale work, Frontline Flashpoints Facing East Ukraine (2022) is currently on-view in the Brooklyn Museum.

Leaving layers of paint, she animates walls with what she describes as “perfect imperfection.” These paintings, with their symmetrical organization and brilliantly overlapping colors and drips, are both constructed and improvisational, blurring perceptions of outer and inner space and confronting paradoxes of harmony and dissonance, optimism and hopelessness.

Hayuk’s Ukrainian heritage, as well as current geopolitical events, inspire her to express abstracted physical and psychological landscapes of the war’s front line, simulating the flash points of explosions, intersecting with the hope of sunrise.

Photographed in The Brooklyn in Museum.

Installation View