Maggie Lawson returned to the place four generations of her ancestors called home, Cincinnati, Ohio, in January 2020. She was awarded my MFA from the University of California Berkeley in May 2018. Lawson's artistic practice emerges in parallel with a focused awareness of the historical and sociological context in which she works. As many of her identities lie mostly inside of the dominant culture, Lawson uses her insider status to uncover the cultural markers of whiteness that continue to make themselves known and evade her at the same time. Lawson uses the stories of her sprawling, white Midwestern family as research from where to speak and generate the concepts that compose her work.
Lawson works in various media, including photography, performance, entrepreneurship, and installation, to inspire healing on personal and community levels. She appropriates mundane objects and subverts their use to invite reexamining relationships to the everyday violence of oppression. Lawson's work references and critiques the past while creating avenues for her audience to collectively envision a new future for their lives and that of their communities. She has shown work at The Oakland Museum of California, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Cittadelarte in Biella Italy, and in the streets of her neighborhood.
Maggie Lawson also works as a chef; she has founded two successful personal chef companies: The Heirloom Chef in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA in 2011 and Goosefoot Cook and Grow in Cincinnati, OH in 2021.
Maggie was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2017 – she was chosen in the Graduate category.