Maya Perry’s solo exhibition at RAINRAIN gallery is both tender and powerful, full of tranquility and wonder. It is a conversation on humanness and existence. With the drawings, we see snapshots of thoughts, memories, feelings, and with the paintings we see narratives and longer moments of growing, returning, and becoming. This exhibition navigates the spaces where memory fractures and re-forms, dealing with the complications of the past.
This breaking and rebuilding of memories evokes the sensation of a dream that is remembered before it was ever had, before it ever existed. Perry uses many symbols and motifs within the works to depict memories and how life is formed around them, growing into many new forms and directions in the process. Like a small seed that grows into a sapling, extending in many directions within its foundations, into new directions, however, it always returns to what first created it.
Right outside of the exhibition is an echoing story of “A hybrid between a dog, wolf, and human” by Perry on the wall text, and I appreciated it being the welcoming point. You can choose whether you want to read it first or last. You decide how you want it to inform you and the work inside. I read it first, feeling the weight of the words and the images they created in my mind. It gave me a somber sense of wonder and a chance at introspection in my own life, introspection that I feel is an important aspect to this show. It is a story of generations and how beings may grow and evolve, but deep down they still hold critical aspects of their past- both good and bad. It shows how attachment becomes a critical part of life, and how it can be both joyful and traumatic. The end of the writing still echoes in my mind, even today,
“In this calling, you hear generations of howls and barks echoing a similar cry.
Till silence is gifted to the soul.
The dog died.
The wolf died.
Others gather around the body. Realizing that all along it was just a child Who knew of beauty
only as a full moon”
Much of the imagery within the works depict dogs, birds, moths, or ants, and the human figure in some of the works carries with it a bit of a self-portrait of the artist. They are sharing their life story with us, their innermost thoughts, and the complexities that come along with their existence. The animals bring honesty, a primal symbol of survival. All of them are meant to convey questions and perceptions of danger. Their lives are symbols of things that we all may experience in some way.
With the large scale graphite drawings, of moths flying, we do not know whether they are flying away from something dangerous or flying towards a new place for something better. The drawings are also hung by leashes, which offers an interesting layer to the work. Leashes are often used to control animals, but also in a way, they keep them safe from other animals walking on the street, this constant push and pull between safety and control, memory and freedom from the past resonates throughout the entire exhibition.
The paintings of the bed offer a moment of contemplation on repetition. Copies of a place; a place where we may find comfort, solace, contemplation, and perhaps a place to hide and look into ourselves. The bed now becomes a site of metamorphosis, a threshold where emotional states permeate one another; it becomes an entry point into a room that exists within a body. The body and everything that makes it up, becomes more than just the structure of the room, it grows and changes. A private space becomes public, and dreams are brought to life.
The animation and the large-scale drawings are larger moments that explore connections in many forms. The work examines the complexities of attachment: the many ways we become bound, leashed, or tied—to our histories, to our habits, sometimes in love, sometimes in survival, and sometimes in the quiet aftermath of things we may have never fully come to terms with. Perry tackles both sides of the conversation with great detail and consideration. Whether you start at the beginning of the animation or halfway through, the cyclical nature is evident. A beginning and a return to the beginning are what Perry brings us on with this presentation.
Using the works to allow the viewer to connect by their own experiences, their own memories, and empathy, Perry is welcoming a conversation. I am drawn by the works and the stories they hold, feeling the tug of the topics they tackle, and feeling grateful to them for opening up the opportunity to examine my own self. We often bottle up our internal feelings or experiences for various reasons: for comfort, for safety, and maybe, perhaps safe-keeping for another time to share with others in a way similar to this exhibition.
The work jumps off the walls. Upon entering the gallery, I am greeted with silent apparitions, guides of emotion that draw me from piece to piece, wondering the stories they may carry within them, and noting how we all change with time. The work pulses with a quiet urgency. Here, the idea of metamorphosis is not only a shifting self, but a continual return to what once was as well. It presents a wholeness. A duality. The show becomes a whole body experience of both internal and external considerations.
Deeply inspired by Franz Kafka, Perry brings viewers through their own metamorphosis. With various mediums and modes to express the stories, they are showing moments when one can forgive but they keep what causes the harm close at hand. A continual return. And with a steady sound of breathing and deep exhales playing in the background of the gallery, we are reminded to pause, step back, and slow down.
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Maya Perry, The Moon Takes Shape of an Outsider’s Light, September 5–October 11, 2025, RAINRAIN Gallery, 110 Lafayette St, Suite 201, New York NY 10013
About the Writer: Taylor Bielecki lives in Gowanus, where her studio is, and works at Pratt Institute, where she earned her MFA, she also studied at Penn State, where she earned a BA in English and a BFA in Fine Arts. She finished as a finalist in the Kennedy Center’s VSA National Emerging Young Artist program for 2017; where she earned an award of Excellence. She has shown prints internationally in a print exchange in Australia and exhibitions in Dubai, India and the Glasgow School of Art. She has also shown paintings internationally in Gallery 24N, PhilaMOCA’s juried exhibitions in Philadelphia, Pa., Perry Lawson Fine Art in Nyack, NY, BWAC in Red Hook, the 2025 Zero Art Fair in Chelsea, and Greenpoint Gallery in Brooklyn. Taylor has written for TUSSLE magazine and joined Art Spiel as a contributing writer.
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