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Mary, a non-binary Chinese-American person wearing a denim vest, crop top, and chain around their neck, stares into the camera. Their shoulder-length hair is pushed back behind their ears, and behind them is a tiled wall.

Photo by Anna Breit.

Artists

Mary Maggic

They // Them // Theirs

Artist and Researcher

Los Angeles, California

Mary Maggic is an artist working primarily at the intersection of hormones, body and gender politics, and environmental toxicity. Their work spans amateur science, public workshopology, participatory performance, documentary, and speculative fiction. Since 2015, Maggic has used “biohacking” as a xeno-feminist practice of care that carries the potential to demystify invisible systems of molecular biopower. They are a recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention in Hybrid Arts (2017) for the project Open Source Estrogen and a ten-month Fulbright research award in Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2019) investigating the role of Javanese mysticism in the plastic pollution crisis. Maggic is a current member of the online network Hackteria - Open Source Biological Art, the tactical theater collective Aliens in Green, and the Asian artist association Mai Ling Vienna.

Donor -The Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

This artist page was last updated on: 08.20.2024

Media
An open suitcase arranged with various lab equipment and printed media sits on a table surrounded by other equipment and papers. The contents of the suitcase include specimen tubes, a tissue box, petri dishes, large syringes, and printed zines. On the table sits larger electronic lab testing equipment and various papers, and on the wall behind the suitcase hangs a brown paper with scientific notes and instructions.

Estrofem! Lab (YES-HER Yeast Lab) by Mary Maggic, 2016. Mobile lab with mixed media, 42 × 28 × 15 centimeters. Installed at Raumschiff Gallery during Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria.

Two transfemme hosts, Maria and Maria, wearing patterned aprons stand posed behind a counter filled with colorful lab equipment, including test tubes, beakers, flasks, shot glasses, and a mason jar filled with a bright pink liquid. The kitchen setting behind them is busily decorated with pink, blue, and silver plates and various posters hanging on the wall, some of which read “Estrogen” and “Estrofem.”

Housewives Making Drugs (video still) by Mary Maggic, 2017. Video, 10 minutes 12 seconds.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

A red gynecological examination chair sits in a white room with blue tinted light. A nearby projector casts an image behind the chair of an animated caliper measuring device floating on a beach shoreline, below text that reads, “Click to start genital scan.” On the wall next to the projection hang the symbols of an open parenthesis, asterisk, and close parenthesis in blue vinyl.

Genital( * )Panic by Maggic Mary, 2019. Multimedia installation. Installed at Mz Baltazars Lab, Vienna.