Mai Ly Torres Baker

About

Mai Ly Torres Baker (b. 1999) is an artist and a recent graduate of the 2025 RCA Graduate Diploma program. Mai Ly’s paintings are rooted in the cultural landscape of her home, New Mexico, where familial traditions, ancestral narratives, and notions of the land have been instilled in her being. She explore themes of cultural preservation and nostalgia, occupying a practice where memory, materiality, methodology, and meaning coalesce into fluid states of becoming. The compositions draw upon memories, conversations, and photos from both personal and familial archives, which become re-interpreted through paint on the canvas and become reflections of the past. 

The work is driven by her curiosity around the ways cultural heritage shapes personal identity, while nurturing diversity and shared meaning amid a world in flux. The integration of found and natural materials, including recycled aluminum cans and ground red chile powder, allows for expanded forms of storytelling through materiality. Inspired by traditional methodologies of New Mexican Spanish Colonial art, specifically retablos and tinwork, the work becomes a site of contemplation between religious and secular expressions of devotion, of past and present. The pieces come together to create a space for recollection and recovery, calling for cross-cultural dialogue and the sharing of traditional knowledge. She believes that through these acts of preservation, the sense of belonging, community, and identity are sustained. 

Contact: mailybaker@gmail.com