Ianah Maia

Ianah Maia is a visual artist from Recife (currently living in Olinda, Pernambuco) and is also a technician in agroecology. She works with paint, urban art, animation, and photographic self-portraits. Ianah sheds an honest, Blackened, and singularly beautiful look at the warmth and feelings she finds in herself and in other Black women. Her characters are set in fantastic universes where the artist plays with future, post-apocalyptic perspectives, where we finally reintegrate with nature by being open to the senses and border on spirituality. Her artistic research includes theoretical and practical research on intersectional feminism, agroecology, decolonization, Afro-diasporic cultures, and Afro-eco-feminist activism.

In 2017 she participated in the artistic residency InArte/Urbana (Natal, Rio Grande do Norte), where she began researching the technique of natural soil pigments (geotinta) for use in urban art murals. Since then, she has been producing most of her works using this technique.

She has participated in group exhibitions such as "Ilustradoras Pernambucanas" (Women Illustrators from Pernambuco), at the First Graphic Humor Exhibition hosted Janete Costa Gallery (Recife, 2012); "Delas", at the Casa do Cachorro Preto Gallery (Olinda, 2015); "Entremoveres," by the National Trovoa collective, at the Abolition Museum (Recife, 2019). And she has signed on to shows and solo exhibitions such as "Água," at Urban Arts Recife gallery (Recife, 2015); "Planta, Bicho e Gente," (Plant, Critter and Folk) at the Casa do Cachorro Preto gallery (Olinda, 2015) and at Casa Naara (Rio de Janeiro, 2017); and her latest solo exhibition (the first one entirely dedicated to the soil paint technique) "Temporal," (Storm) opened at Mia Café (Recife, 2019).

Ianah is part of the art Entremoveres collective, which is part of the Trovoa National Uprising. She is also a member of Terra Coletiva (a collective of Brazilian artists who work with natural pigments) and the graffiti and urban art crew PixeGirls.