About the artist
Born in Lima, Peru, Maria Chávez currently resides in New York. She is known as an abstract turntablist, sound artist, and DJ. Accidents, coincidences, and failures are common themes in her sound sculptures, installations, and her works that she generates in her performances with a record player.
Her improvisational solos on turntables combine recorded sounds of vinyl records with the electroacoustic sounds of vinyl and the needle in various stages of decay. She combines the practice of improvisation with the inherent unstable conditions of a turntable, allowing accidents to dictate each piece of sound.
She wrote Chance Procedures on Turntable, a book/instruction manual documenting the last 10 years of her abstract practice with turntables developed entirely through chance procedures.
You can hear her sets —which vary from the eclectic to the House & Techno— at art museum openings (MoMA, MoMA PS1, Haus für elektronische Künste- Basel), events (Van Alen Institute, El Museo del Barrio, BRIC- Brooklyn), New York Fashion Week- NYFW (SunheeNY, BeBe, Bimba y Lola, Pola Thomson, VOUTSA), festivals (Moving Sounds, 9 Evenings, Villa Romana Festival- Firenze) and radio (NTS Radio, The LOT Radio, Reboot. fm, RBMA Radio).