Morocco
Artist: Maha Taitano
Artist Statement:
Maha is a multimedia artist who works with all mediums including metals, wood, fabrics, papers, plastics and more. Maha was born in Baghdad, Iraq and lived in Beirut, Lebanon, Guåhan (Guam), and Morocco before her family finally settled in Alameda, California In 1983. In 2007 she earned a BA in Visual Arts University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2017 Maha returned to UC Santa Cruz to obtain a second Bachelor’s in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. She recently completed an MFA in Visual Arts at Vermont College of the Fine Arts in February 2023. During her graduate program she focused on decolonizing her art practice and ideologies.
Currently, Maha’s work focuses on dismantling and disrupting White Supremacy, White Feminism, American Exceptionalism and Institutional Critique. She has a methodical decolonized and pre-colonized art practice stemming from her education as a Pacific Islander and Arab artist. Researching indigenous matriarchal epistemologies from her two cultures is currently guiding her subject matter and her practice when responding to White Western systems of oppression.
Maha’s craft business also stems from a rooted indigenous research. She pulls from both Arab and predominantly Pacific Islander geometric patterns and designs to influence her woodworking.
Sponsorship available
Current and Former residents of Watsonville that share this cultural heritage:
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