meet the artist

Ava Maria Brock is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores the portals between the Divine and the Familiar. Her paintings are layered with color and iconography in the depiction of otherworldly beings traversing intimate, mundane spaces. Brock builds worlds and beings that often reference her own lived and imagined experiences as a Queer Black woman seeking both safety and empowerment. The familiarity of these worlds serves as a portal for these figures to enter their internal world, as a means to connect to an external Source that connects us all. Her work investigates the relationship between vulnerability and power, but also how ordinary moments of intimacy transcend into the extraordinary.

Ava Maria Brock (b. 2000) received her B.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2022. Her work has been in group exhibitions such as “For Us By Us” hosted by Recluse Archives at the Black Image Center (2024); BLAQ SHEEP at Superchief Gallery LA (2023); No Knowledge of Utopia at 2to3Fair (2022); “I Just Went To Go Smoke, But No One Was There” at the New Wight Gallery (2022).