Maria Chavez

Born in Lima, Peru, Maria Chavez is an an abstract turntablist, sound artist, and DJ. Accidents, coincidence, and failures are themes that unite her sound sculptures, installations, and other works with her solo turntable performance practice. She visited Richmond for a ten-day artist residency at the University of Richmond and to kick off Sound Arts Richmond, a citywide sound arts festival that continues through August of this year. I spoke with Maria as she was installing Topography of Sound: Peaks and Valleys Series, a solo exhibition of new paintings and illustrations based on microscopic images of vinyl and needle. Chavez chose to show this work as two-dimensional rather than as a sound installation because, in the sound arts world and in the art markets, the expectation is that sound art can only be emitted sound from a speaker or from a person. And, as you will hear, Chavez is not a person who likes to be boxed in by external expectations.