“As a self-trained artist, Fuji is exactly the kind of talent Artadia seeks to champion: ambitious and focused, sharing her interior world with generosity and drawing on anime, manga, and traditional Buddhist and Shinto iconography to reveal something of herself, her family, and her culture. I’m eager to see what this support makes possible for her next chapter.” – Trisha Lagaso Goldberg, Independent Curator and Director of Programming & Engagement, Anderson Collection

“Maya Fuji’s semi-autobiographical paintings shed light on experiences of cultural hybridity by elevating mundane everyday moments to an almost altar-like status. Her slick yet playful pop-inspired compositions blend Shinto and buddhist iconography/symbolism with Bay Area sub cultural references—poignant reflections on nostalgia, the intimacy of the domestic sphere, and the complexity of defining home for immigrant communities.” – Amara Antilla, Independent Curator

Through painting and traditional Japanese craft, Maya Fuji explores how traditions shift through migration and across generations. Drawing from her experience immigrating from Kanazawa, Japan to the San Francisco Bay Area, her work considers how ethnically mixed people, immigrants, and children of immigrants maintain cultural traditions while adapting them to new environments and circumstances.

Inspired by mythology and folklore, Fuji envisions the spirits of Japanese folklore immigrating alongside her family and existing within her own experiences growing up in the Bay Area during the 90s and early 2000s. Her work draws connections between Shōwa and Heisei-era Japan and Bay Area subcultures, reflecting on a period when new technologies increasingly connected distant places and cultures. Through these imagined encounters, she considers how inherited traditions persist, transform, and find new forms of expression far from their place of origin.

Maya Fuji (b. 1988 Kanazawa, Japan) lives and works out of San Francisco. She has had solo and duo exhibitions at Charlie James Gallery (CA), YOD Gallery (Osaka), and Glass Rice Gallery (CA). Recent group exhibitions include Marjorie Barrick Museum (NV), Asia Society (TX), Crocker Art Museum (CA). Awards and residencies include Fountainhead Residency, Headlands Center For The Arts Tournesol Award, Fleishhaker Foundation Eureka Fellow, Innovate Grant, and the SFAC Artist Grant. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Crocker Art Museum. She is currently represented by Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles.