Meet the Artist
Born in Tallahassee, Florida, and now based in Atlanta, Maya Spencer is a visual artist whose practice is rooted in self-documentation and the preservation of lived experience. Drawing from personal archives, everyday observations, and life online, Spencer explores memory, identity, and the ways people assign meaning to the moments, images, and objects they choose to preserve. Her work considers documentation not simply as a record of the past, but as a way of shaping how personal histories are remembered, understood, and carried forward.
“Both of my grandparents on my dad’s side were affected by diseases that deteriorated their memory. On my mom’s side, I never had the chance to meet my grandma. I know her only through old photographs and a necklace of hers that was passed down to me. I only vaguely remember my grandpa, and those memories seem to drift farther away each day. I think all of this is part of why I hold so tightly to memories.
I’ve kept a memory box since I was a kid. It’s filled with photographs, notes, objects, and little pieces of my life that I never want to forget. In a lot of ways, my work has become an extension of that box. That instinct to document, collect, and preserve has shaped a lot of what I do in my artistry.”
-Maya Spencer
My Approach
Spencer’s approach to art begins with documentation. She collects photographs, screenshots, conversations, objects, and small observations from everyday life, treating them as pieces of a personal archive. She is interested in the things people instinctively choose to save and what those choices reveal about how they understand themselves.
Rather than separating art from daily life, Spencer uses her own experiences as source material. Memory is imperfect, and documentation is never completely objective, so her work often exists somewhere between what happened, what she remembers, and what she chooses to preserve.
Through this process, Spencer considers preservation as a form of meaning-making. The ordinary becomes significant simply because someone decided it was worth keeping.