Yuhanxiao Ma & Anna Ren
Researcher & Multimedia Artists @ DXARTS, University of Washington & New York University
Yuhanxiao (Maggie) Ma is a US-based multimedia artist and PhD researcher at the University of Washington’s Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS). Working across installation, sculpture, speculative design, interactive media, and performance, she examines how scientific, medical, and technical systems shape bodies, labour, and lived experience.
Her work constructs speculative worlds that borrow the visual and procedural languages of institutions while remaining deliberately incomplete. These systems invite viewers to enter, operate, and help produce their meanings. Her research focuses on evidentiary interfaces, embodied technical knowledge, and histories of labour within technological systems.
Ma’s work has been exhibited and presented across the US, Canada, and Europe, including at LACMA, Ars Electronica, and THE BLANC. Her peer-reviewed research spans computational media, interactive systems, and critical artistic practice, with publications in ACM and IEEE proceedings. She has received commissions, fellowships, and residency support from UW, NYU Gallatin, SVA, and international arts organizations.
Anna Ren is a New York–based new media artist working across expanded animation, performance, installation, and interactive media. Her practice explores hybrid spaces between physical and digital environments, focusing on how technology mediates relationships between body, memory, and space. Drawing from experiences living across different cultural backgrounds, her work investigates cultural displacement and in-between states through immersive environments and real-time visual systems.
Her work has been exhibited and presented internationally at venues and conferences including Ars Electronica Festival, ISEA, CAA, ACM TEI, and others. Recently, her expanded animation work was selected as a winner of the SMTH International Contest 5th Edition, where it was showcased across more than 30 public screens in Spain, and was also named a semifinalist for the Cannes Indie Shorts Award.