Gabriel .A. Maher Studio develops research-driven visual, spatial and written work investigating how media infrastructures shape social and spatial experience.
photo by Natascha Libbert
Gabriel Maher
Gabriel Maher (they/them) is a designer working at the intersection of media and spatial practice. Taking the effects of design and the act of designing as their central lens, Maher treats the algorithmic culture of media infrastructures as objects of interdisciplinary inquiry. They cut into and decode how these designed systems coordinate and leverage the movement of images, data and people across space.
Through spatial installations, objects, analogue and automated visual montage, film and writing, Maher reveals how media infrastructures script attention, orient bodies, and organise experience.
Maher is a PhD researcher at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, and teaches at Design Academy Eindhoven.
Exhibitions
Exhibitions and presentations at international museums and cultural institutions including:
Serpentine Galleries
Vitra Design Museum
Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York
Het Nieuwe Instituut
Design Museum Barcelona
Design Museum Den Bosch
Centraal Museum
Kunstgewerbemuseum Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden
C-Mine, Genk
Center for Craft, North Carolina
Grants | Awards
Recognition through international awards, research grants and residencies including:
IphiGenia Gender Design Award, iDGN (2019)
Hublot Design Prize, Shortlist (2018)
Stimuleringsfonds Independent Research Grant (2019), with Ro Pérez Gayo
Independent Research Grant, Baltan Laboratories (2019), with Ro Pérez Gayo
Iaspis International Residency, Swedish Arts Grants Committee (2017–2018)
Stimuleringsfonds Talent Development Grant for International Contexts (2016)
Keep an Eye Grant for Alumni (2016)
Stimuleringsfonds Talent Development Grant (2015)
Gijs Bakker Award (2014)
Keep an Eye Grant (2014)
Presentations
Invited lectures, talks and performances across Europe and Australia including:
Whitechapel Gallery
Stedelijk Museum
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Venice Architecture Biennale
Het Nieuwe Instituut
Salone del Mobile
Madrid Design Week
Barcelona Design Week
Dutch Design Week
ACUADS Conference
Publications
Writing explores the relationship between media infrastructures, spatial experience and algorithmic culture, appearing across academic journals, edited volumes and design research publications including:
Cities on Loop: The Algorithmic Rewriting of Public Space in Amsterdam. Doctoral work, Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam
Routledge, Contentious Cities: Design and the Gendered Production of Space (2020), with Ro Pérez Gayo
Valiz, The Auto-ethnographic Turn in Design (2021)
Valiz, Social Design | Social Matter (2020)
Sternberg Press, Materialisation in Art & Design (MAD) (2019), with Carly Rose Bedford
Spector Books, The Facit Model: Globalism, Localism & Identity (2018), with Kiki Mager
Nieuwe Instituut, A Reparative Reading of DDW 2019 (ReadingSites, 2019), with Carly Rose Bedford
Studies in Material Thinking, Auckland University of Technology (2016)
Press
New York Times
Frame Magazine
W Magazine
Financial Times
Icon Magazine
Disegno Journal
Eye on Design
Maharam
Pedagogy
Pedagogical work extends this practice through embodied and participatory processes that are spatially situated. Maher teaches at Design Academy Eindhoven (Contextual, Geo and Social Design MA) and has taught widely across art and design institutions in Europe and Australia.