Maria Mayer is a textile designer, artist and researcher from Germany. In her work she explores the contemporary ways of alchemy. Her work focuses on the examination of raw materials from nature such as fungi, plants and bacteria. The traditional cultural heritage of textile design and surface formation is the root of her artistic exploration of biological media, and the millennia-old cultural heritage of natural dyeing in particular is the central means of her work. 

 

In research series and installation works, she explores the potential of natural raw materials at the interface of industrial textile design processes and biotechnology. 

 

Maria Mayer studied textile and surface design at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle an der Saale under Professor Bettina Göttke-Krogmann. She worked on interdisciplinary projects over several semesters in the painting/glass class under Professor Christine Triebsch.

As a student assistant at the university, she was involved in the Organic Prints research project, in which she co-developed industrial screen printing inks based on natural components and also assisted in the university's textile workshops screen printing/dyeing and weaving from 2014-2018.

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A further development took her to Barcelona as an assistant at the BioLabs of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC). In collaboration with the Materialdesigners project in Milan, she was able to work on projects at the interface between design and biotechnology. 

She lived and worked in Munich, Halle and abroad before moving back to the Bavarian Alps, where she was born and grew up. Today she lives in Dießen am Ammersee.

As artistic director, she is involved in the cultural collective Freie Kunstanstalt an Offspace in Dießen am Ammersee and is involved in curating exhibitions.

 

Maria Mayer has received several grants and prizes, including the international BKV prize, the artist grant from the state of Saxony-Anhalt, the "Kunst für uns" project grant from the BBK Bayern and an "Artist in Lab" research grant from TUM Organisation Munich, where she is currently researching mycelium-based embroidery. 

 

An important basis for her current work was a fundamental training as a tailor in the workshops at the Bavarian State Theatre in Munich, which she completed as a multiple award-winning journeywoman.

 

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, such as at a.topos Venice in Italy and the Dutch Design Week Eindhoven in the Netherlands.