Malaya Bengel focuses on slowing down to match the natural world’s pace. Just as one might contemplate the beauty in the way the
leaves shake in the sky or the water ripples in a newly formed puddle, Bengel processes conceptual ideas and creates art to this
careful mode of being. She utilizes traditional materials such as oil paint and graphite while incorporating modern recycled items.
Bengel is interested in portraying an unabashed confrontation of emotions hidden deep in one’s subconscious through portraiture.
Her subject’s gazes are almost entirely looking outward to the viewer with an unmasked and brave attitude. Emotions that are taught
to be hidden or dealt with in private, such as shame, fear, guilt, or sadness find proud homes in the bodies and facial expressions of
Bengel’s subjects. Bengel is particularly interested in how these emotions created by physical and mental traumas are stored and
hidden within the mind and physical body. She questions how the process of painting can unearth these emotions stored away in
herself and others. Not only interested in human emotions, Bengel also feels that there is opportunity for visual interest in every piece
of trash created today. She works with waste materials such as plastics, paper goods, and abandoned fabrics. Just as one might
observe the wonders of the natural world, Bengel feels one can with the waste created by the people of the world. In connecting with
the trash produced in modern society, Bengel believes one can deepen their understanding of the wasteful demands of late-stage
capitalism and hyper-consumerist culture. Bengel finds empowerment in taking the items that are harming the planet earth and
highlighting their possibility for visual pleasure and interest. She strongly believes great power lies in connecting the natural world
and its speed to modern lives, particularly regarding individuals’ whole emotional spectrum and the physical materials that surround
them. Often Bengel implements her experience with traditional materials into her reworkings of waste materials. This includes
defamiliarizing the material from its original representation, cutting, pasting, sculpting, painting, and molding it until a beauty
completely new is born. Ultimately, Bengel looks to explore ideas, emotions, and physical objects relegated to being useless, worthy of
shame or of hiding and reframing its view to one of purpose and beauty.