Maya Nava (b. 1999) is a painter living and working in London. Nava explores femininity as a negotiation between bodily autonomy and internalised surveillance, examining the ‘stylisation’ of the body and the ways it is moulded, regulated and disciplined. Drawn to the boundary where the body meets the ephemeral self, she investigates the tension that arises on this threshold, where identity begins to take shape. She sees the outward expression as malleable, where certain behavioural acts and repeated gestures re-assign identity.

She confronts the interplay between femininity and performance as it is filtered through an internal lens of self-surveillance. In this way her characters become voyeurs of themselves, implicated in the act of watching. Her painted subjects grapple with juxtaposed forces. Under self-scrutiny they are both complicit with the gaze and mock it, deploying poses that are unmistakably feminine.

Her figures are contained in surreal landscapes, satirically exaggerated by bodily excess: oversized feet, obnoxious heels and hair, overdrawn hips, scant clothing and exposed skin. Their agency does not erase their vulnerability; it exists alongside it. Within this ambiguity, visibility becomes both a site of exposure and a subtle form of control.