Maraya Lopez (Berdscarnival) (she/her) lives in New York City. She earned her MFA in Painting/ Sculpture at Pratt Institute in 2010. She was born in Lubbock, Texas but moved to East Texas when she was 13. The silent expansive plains of Lubbock still influence her work today. Her work has been exhibited in numerous group and collaborative exhibitions in Texas and in NYC at Gallery 76102, Arlington, Texas in 2010, The Painting Center, New York City in 2012, Momenta Gallery, Brooklyn, NY in 2015, A.I.R. Gallery, Dumbo, New York in 2017, Flux Factory, Queens, New York in 2017, and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York in 2017. She has developed an autonomous mode of working where she acts as curator, artist and exhibitionist for public projects that she calls “strategies”. The projects entail fundraising and finding spaces off the beaten track that become her studio for a period of time. In 2015 she spent the summer working out of a carnival game trailer at Coney Island where she launched her Magic Machine 2015 strategy.

Furthermore, she has collaborated with numerous artists and groups throughout her career including Occupy Museums (OM), Brooklyn based artist Noah Fischer (OM’s initiator) and Marilyn Jolly of Dallas, Texas. In 2012, OM traveled to Berlin, Germany to exhibit in the 7th Berlin, Biennial.

Maraya splits her time between her on-site studio in DUMBO, NY, her work at AYB, and her job as a security guard at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.