NIGHT MOTH
A Mythology of Escape
Since the beginning of 2020 and the start of COVID-19, artist Maggie Hazen has been exchanging a sketchbook with D.W., a resident at the Columbia Secure Center for Girls—a maximum detention center in the Hudson Valley. Together they have been building a multi-media project called Night Moth: A Mythology of Escape about D.W's humanoid avatar character Luna, a teenage green moth goddess imprisoned on the moon and her fairy-godfather Seven, a seven legged octopus. Together they create a world in isolation in order to escape.
This website started as part of the De:Formal Residency and is the first public step in the project. We will continue to publish episodes of these two character as the sketchbook continues to be exchanged and more narrative is written. Special thanks to project supporters Pioneer Works
Maggie Hazen is a New York based visual artist from Los Angeles and has cultivated a diverse artistic practice which includes sculpture, video, collage and performance. She is a founder and member of the Columbia Collective where where she works with and supports the art projects of young incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists at the formerly titled Columbia Secure Center for Girls in the Hudson Valley. Hazen’s work explores themes of resistance and healing in a cinematically real world of violence through complex images, videos, and sculptures that merge mythology, technology, and advocacy.
She has exhibited, screened and performed works at The Bronx Museum (New York), Pulse Miami Beach as part of Pulse Play (Miami), The Museum of Tolerance (Los Angeles), Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Light Year on the Manhattan Bridge (Brooklyn), The Granoff Center (Brown University), Performance Works Northwest (Portland), CICA Museum (South Korea), and The Boston Young Contemporaries (Boston); among others.
She has had residencies and fellowships at Pioneer Works (New York); The Bronx Museum (New York), The Shanghai Institute of Visual Art (China), The Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, European Graduate School (Switzerland), I:O at the Helikon Art Center (Turkey), Vermont Studio Center (Vermont) and The Pasadena Side Street Projects (California). She holds a BFA in sculpture from Biola University and an MFA in sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design and has taught at New York University, The Stevens Institute of Technology, The Shanghai Institute of Visual Art and is currently a professor at Bard College in Studio Arts.
