Meet the Artist

Maya

Kaplan

Painting

“The Feminist Avant-Garde and Surrealist art movements heavily influence this body of work. By creating centaur-women, I dissect the identity of horses and women in relation to both being’s power and prey-ness. Emphasizing the colour purple through oil paint as a symbol of the gender spectrum and the multiple truths of experiencing femininity in modernity, the work aims to be immersive through scale. Although academically derived from an existentialist, intersectional feminist lens, it is not an exhaustive or universal representation of womanhood. The mythological portraits are personal to my experiences as a white, Jewish, feminine, human. Key themes include: scopophilia, freedom, the gaze, myth, performance, authenticity, and distortion. Being ‘powerful prey’ is not exclusive to either horses or human women. My thesis invites the viewer to consider its visual language as an introduction to the duality or multiple truths of femininity in modernity – what should we do with it?”

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Maya Kaplan (b. 2004) is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist working primarily in oil paint. She is studying the horse as a metaphor for femininity and power dynamics, and as a commentary on confinement vs. freedom throughout Canadian, Western, and global history.
OCAD U - Faculty of Art
Drawing and Painting
Major Completed, 2026

Oil Painting Digital Illustration

2025, Velocity
She Said Gallery, Toronto, ON
2025, High Tempo
Gallery 1065, Toronto, ON
2025, Dearly Detritus
Youthful Vengeance, Toronto, ON
2025, Ontario Court of Justice
Toronto, ON
2025, Springboard
OCAD University, Toronto, ON
2024, Family Matters
Ada Slaight Gallery, Toronto, ON
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