Maya Davis

Knowledge is infrastructure, too 🌧️🌿 As part of Maya Davis’ Eco-Artist Residency project, Water as Witness, this community zine explores flooding, stormwater, environmental justice, and the systems shaping life in Detroit neighborhoods like Brightmoor. Created in accessible, community-centered language, the zine breaks down how stormwater systems work, why flooding happens, available resources, and the power of collective learning and storytelling. The zine will be available during Maya Davis’ upcoming Water as Witness exhibition and installation opening at Eliza Howell Park later this spring / early summer. Stay tuned for event details ✨ Interested in learning more about stormwater systems and ecological stewardship? Join us for our FREE Master Rain Garden Certification Course at Eliza Howell Park 🌱 🗓 June 9, 16, 23 | 9:30 AM–12:30 PM 🗓 June 24 | 9:30 AM–3 PM Build Day Sign up and learn more at the link in our bio. Project by Maya Davis with support from Sidewalk Detroit and research support from University of Michigan Dow Sustainability Fellows. Graphic design by @flower.press 🌼 📸 Special thanks and photo credit to @friendsoftherouge 🌱 Thank you to the project consultants: DOW Sustainability Fellows, Friends of the Rouge, Healthy Urban Waters, Nicky Marcot, and Sierra Club.

My @kresgeartsdetroit Film “The Memorial” is public today, which features an abridged love poem to my practice and the histories that surround it. I’m feeling very grateful to have caught this glimpse of my work on film with so may people but also excited to share the full form of the poem that was just published in “Love in A Crumbling Empire” by @awe.society alongside “Defending Detroit” by @pettypropolis you can buy a copy @awe.society ‘s link tree <3

"I want you to know that when I cut fresh leaves for your each morning, it is because I love you." 🏆 Maya Davis | 2025 Kresge Artist Fellow 🎬 A film by na forest lim showcasing @mayabdavis Series produced by @7cylindersstudio and Kresge Arts in Detroit. Watch the full showcase on Detroit PBS, link in bio. Artist Bio: Maya Davis explores the interconnected concepts of care, preservation, and resilience through diverse media and processes. They examine care as both an intimate act and a collective responsibility, drawing parallels between the colonial and ecological histories that shape communities and ecosystems. Davis has exhibited throughout the Midwest and worked alongside organizations such as Modern Ancient Brown, Independent Curators International, and Bulk Space. Their work has been supported by Sidewalk Detroit, Culture Source, and MDW Coalition.

Homage To An Abandonment: Detroit Reared Silk, Pine 2025 Finally getting around to show these images form Wayfinding: Human Intervention last year, curated by @jordanbarrant and surrounded by the art of @reneeroyale and @skinlessdogg and including some of the lovely writing Jordan was able to include in the accompanying exhibition publication alongside the musings of @cherub.jpeg and @teempe If you’ve ever found yourself lost and found your way back, you may have used a form of wayfinding. Wayfinding is a process of utilizing cues from the natural world to orient yourself, to know yourself and where you are, and to find, in conversation with yourself and the natural world, a path towards a destination. Wayfinding: Human Intervention, curated by Jordan Barrant as part of the Roots & Culture CONNECT Residency, looks at three artists employing methodologies of wayfinding through a response to colonial interventions and the creation of their own. The exhibition features Renee Royale (b. 1990), a research-based and process-oriented visual artist based in New Orleans and Chicago; Aidan Anne Frierson (b. 1998), a Chicago-based papermaker; and Maya Davis (b. 1999), a Detroit-based multidisciplinary artist. Rooted at the intersection of Black Geographies and Feminist Ecologies, this exhibition looks to theorists Katherine McKittrick and Anna Tsing to understand how artists respond to the historical and ongoing interventions by colonial enterprises into our natural world, and how they, in response and in conversation with it, create their own material-based interventions. 📸@bob.mov

Final week of Queer Ecologies II at Charlotte Street! Collab between The Waiting Room and Purple Window Gallery. Image (left to right): SK Reed, Maven Kennedy, Kate Humphrey, and Maya Davis. Featuring: Bianca Brandolino @bianca.brandolino Maya Davis @mayabdavis Lily Erb @lilywelderb Eve Gordon @from.eves.studio Naomi Hamlin-Navias @allfishgotoheaven Kate Humphrey @kateweavesthings Missy IsaMoore @unrelaxedmissy , @petalsandironkc Linye Jiang @linye.j Katie Kaplan @pennysmasher Maven Kennedy @mkennedystudios Justin Korver @justincaseyourewondering Calder Kamin @calderful Emily Mulvaney @emily_mulvaney David Nasca @davnasca Lucas Nguyen @lucas_fiberarts SK Reed @sk__paints Oona Taper @oonataper Exer Thurston @baybey.baybye Kellen Wright @kellen__w Eli Brown @eli.m.brown Photo by @egschempf

Continuing through Aries season with my Kresge Film debut, airing tonight on PBS at 9pm. This film is a little love letter to the ethos of my practice, featuring some of my early explorations in writing. It’s accompanied by a beautiful harp score by @ackeemrsalmon , shot on film by @midwestcowboy_ , and produced by @radicalplay.art . This year has been exciting and bountiful, and I’m grateful to share this ‘lil two minute piece, an exploration of industrial rebirth and a meditation on renewal through flame, with the world, with support from @kresgeartsdetroit .

Excited to share this upcoming exhibition! “Grass Grows in the Icebox” curated by Nathan Byrne & Emily Staugaitis (@byrnenate and @bandhu_gardens ) at Cluster Museum @clustermuseum 🌱 opening reception: Saturday April 4th 5-8 pm closing reception: Saturday April 25th 2-5 pm Grass Grows in the Icebox explores relationships cultivated by artists working with nonhuman beings, land, and natural materials not as subject or object, but as collaborators. The artists in this exhibition are contemplating the labors of land work, care and attention, ecofeminism, empathy with other-than-human domains, somatic remembering, restoration, and repair. Ruth K. Burke, Marianne Hoffmeister Castro, Cyrah Dardas, Maya Davis, Grace Millard, and Kirby Shoote meet the world with a lens of closeness, an insistence and persistence of attention🌾 As light as silk and as heavy as stone, the vibrancy of materials and modalities in Grass Grows in the Icebox invite us to consider the ways in which everything is connected and creative practice can be conduits for those connections ♾️ @ruthkburkeart @marianne.hoffmeister @cyrah_power @mayabdavis @grmllrd @_challahgram All Grass Grows promo material designed by: Sky Christoph @sky.christoph 🦋

Trials of Home on Detroit Soil Pit-fired Detroit Clay, Silkworms (Bombyx mori) 2026 – Ongoing Excited to be sharing new work that feels very close to my heart and to this moment in time. Opening March 27 5-9pm at @detroit_design_district Gallery 2857 E. Grand Blvd. As a part of @nceca This project continues my research into the histories of Midwestern silk industries, following the thread of how colonial and ecological scars have overlapped and settled into the land, into the bodies of species, and into the quiet aftermath of industries that came, extracted, and left. And it feels especially impactful that with the trust and support of @srimoyee.mitra , these thoughts were able to take form as a truly living body of work. Over the course of the exhibition, the life cycles of the beings I have been collaborating with have unfolded in real time, with the final cocoons emerging during this closing weekend. What remains is a creature born into a world without an infrastructure to maintain it, and relies on the intervention of the human hand. Bombyx mori, brought here and genetically crafted as a byproduct of human ambition, now exists in a midwestern landscape that no longer has the means to care for it. These vessels are made from clay foraged from Detroit soil and pit fired with organic-rich material, carbon held within the memory of the clay itself. Each form was shaped in response to the spinning circumference of Bombyx mori as an act of attention and a quiet attempt at building a home for something that arrived without one. The work reflects on what it means to be brought to, and born on, U.S. soil, yet recognized as belonging or legitimate only when one’s value can be extracted or made legible through economy. I will be showing this work alongside other incredible artists at STAMPS Gallery in Legacies opening this Friday, March 27. These conversations about generation, species, and inheritance feel urgent and alive and I am grateful to be in a room still asking what the land holds, and what it is asking of us. Thank you @sawahburger for the film captures

I’m thrilled to share a few small works with Design By Desire curated by Cristin Richard @house_of_raw , alongside so many brilliant artists and designers. This summer marked my third generation of my home sericulture projects, and with it, a deepening fixation on Bombyx Mori. I raised roughly 500 silkworms from egg to moth and was completely swept up in the care, the material, and the quiet awe of the lives they hold. Each morning I wake to gather fresh mulberry leaves, feed my brood, and record their growth and ailments with care. I clean their enclosures every other day. I isolate the sick and memorialize the ones who pass. I have guided them through three full generations of mating and cocooning, and am consistently fascinated by the process of metamorphosis. It’s been a love and an exhaustion in figuring out the technicalities and specificities of an animal that has been so genetically modified to produce a commodity that it can’t exist without human intervention. Stripped of its survival mechanisms, its flight, its color and its strength. Through my little practice it’s felt really beautiful to get to know something so intimately that has been looked at as mechanical for so long. To and see how something breaths and moves and dances and gets excited. They have no idea they were made for production and are doing their best to survive nonetheless. I’ll be showing a little snippet of this process at Design By Desire on September 5th with sculptures sculpted of Detroit Clay made to be the perfect size of a silkworms spinning needs.

A small vignette of some of the work I had the pleasure of making with the support of @modernancientbrown with the Post Bac Residency program ♥️ I’m so grateful to have had the support of the foundation and my amazing community and city and could not be appreciate abundance more than I have over the past few months Photos by the lovely @sawahburger

Over the past few months I’ve been working with the support of @modernancientbrown exploring the histories surrounding the Midwest’s silk production, focusing on its colonial scars. My research is rooted in the examination of how species adapt to non native environments and the ethical implications of being brought to land against their will and intertwining physical research with post-colonial theory regarding the ethics of invasiveness. The foundation of this research lies in the sericulture of silk worms raised entirely on Detroit-grown mulberry leaves, tracking the way each generation adapts due to their environment and food sources and become biologically attuned to Detroit’s cultivar of mulberry. This work will be on view during my open studios with @modernancientbrown on December 13th… stay tuned for more details <3 <3 📸📸 - @sawahburger thx for the amazing film shots

A little growing up montage through friends n fams films + a little remembrance of the love of my life