Born in 1992 in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China. She currently lives and works in Shanghai.

 

In 2013, she moved to New York to study photography at the School of Visual Arts, where she received her BFA in 2016 and MFA in 2018. Her practice began in the beld of fashion photography and gradually evolved into a visual approach centered on the body, portraiture, and cultural perception.

 

Growing up in a city shaped by intersecting languages, customs, and visual memories, Ma developed a heightened sensitivity to the textures of clothing, familial imagery, and street gestures. These cultural experiences are not directly thematized in her work, but instead form the underlying foundation and trajectory of her visual sensibility.

 

Her work merges traditional narrative with contemporary expression, navigating a space between documentary and constructed image-making. She consistently explores themes of identity, gendered experience, youth culture, and emotional structure, using photography to engage with the complexities of individuals within their cultural contexts—while maintaining openness in both image and interpretation.

 

Since 2018, her work has been active across the belds of contemporary art and cultural publishing. It has appeared in international media including New York Magazine, VOGUE, and Artinfo, and has been exhibited in cities such as London, New York, Miami, and Hong Kong. She has held solo exhibitions at Aranya Art Center, Gaotai Gallery, Mine Project, and Alter Gallery. Her work is included in the collections of White Rabbit Gallery, Song Art Museum, X Museum, and Light Society (Beijing), as well as various private collectors.

 

In 2024, Ma was selected for the BoF 500 list of global bgures shaping the future of fashion and culture, as one of the few China-born female visual creators represented.

 

Her fine art practice is currently represented by Gaotai Gallery.

 

Ma’s photographic work is grounded in a nuanced sensitivity to cultural experience. Through a personal yet cross-disciplinary visual language, she articulates a form of contemporary expression that is both free and continuously evolving.