ART PRACTICE
Maja Petrić creates sculptures and immersive environments in which light assumes atmospheric and physical presence. In her work, light behaves as if it were a living phenomenon, shifting, accumulating, and transforming in ways that unsettle familiar assumptions about matter, space, and the stability of the visible world. These perceptual encounters reveal how reality can become fluid, uncertain, and newly open to interpretation.
Her practice is grounded in original optical instruments, advanced computational methods, computer vision, and robotics. These systems, typically designed for measurement, prediction, and control, are redirected toward perceptual and ecological experience. Petrić subverts their intended functions to explore how technological systems shape, constrain, and can ultimately expand human understanding of the environment, of one another, and of time.
Across her works, light becomes a medium of presence and relation. Sculptures respond to changing environmental conditions, revealing temporal and ecological processes that are otherwise imperceptible. Installations transform visitors into persistent traces of light, creating shared environments shaped by human presence and memory. Robotic systems introduce deviations and uncertainties that become integral to the artwork, foregrounding the agency of both human and nonhuman forces.
Together, these works form a coherent artistic language in which atmospheric systems of light behave as living entities, inviting viewers to reconsider the boundaries between perception, environment, and technological mediation.
artist
maja Petrić
For more than two decades, Maja Petrić has developed an internationally recognized practice that merges artistic experimentation, scientific inquiry, and technological invention. Her work has been exhibited at Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, FOR-SITE Foundation in San Francisco, Farol Santander in São Paulo, HOFA Gallery in London, and Phillips in London and Hong Kong. She has created large-scale public and site-specific commissions for National Geographic Lindblad, Meta, Google, Microsoft, SEA-TAC, Korean Air, and Amazon.
Her work has received international recognition, including the Lumen Prize for Art and Technology, the Digital Art Award for Innovation, and the Richard Kelly Light Art Award. Her interdisciplinary research has received support from the National Science Foundation, with related work published in scientific literature and presented at NeurIPS, ICCV, and ISEA.
She founded and directed Creative Lighting, the first graduate program dedicated to light art, at the European Institute of Design (IED) in Madrid, where she taught courses on light, perception, and technological experimentation. She has also taught at the University of Washington, Complutense University of Madrid, and Medialab Prado.
Petrić’s work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, Fast Company, Vogue, GQ, FRAME Magazine, and Deutsche Welle. She has been invited to speak at SXSW, Christie’s, the National Gallery in London, Microsoft Research, Seattle Art Fair, and IBM.
Petrić holds a PhD in Digital Arts and Experimental Media from the University of Washington and a master’s degree in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University. She was born in Zagreb, Croatia, and is based in Seattle, Washington.
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PUBLICATIONS
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS FEATURING PETRIĆ’S WORK
Light Collective Collected Light Volume One: Women Light Artists (2023)
4Culture Remark (2022)
Phaidon Press Art and Electronic Media Online Companion (2019)
SANDU Publishing New Media Installation: Technology in Public Art (2018)
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS BY MAJA PETRIĆ
Amsterdam University Press Doing Digital Migration Studies: Theories and Practices of the Everyday (2024)
University of Washington Press Transforming the Poetic Experience of Space Through Light (2013)
ISEA Proceedings Pursuing the Unknowable Through Transformative Spaces (2011)
MAIA Conference Proceedings outSIDEin, Light In The Middle Of The Tunnel (2009)
New York University Press Atmospherizing Architecture: outSIDEin (2006)
Open Society Scholar Forum, New York Epistemology of the Balkans (2005)
Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania, Buchurest Mapping the Art (2003)
East Art Map / Federal Cultural Foundation, Berlin Mapping the Art (2002)
K&S Gallery, Berlin Eastern European Performance Art (2002)
Franklin Furnace Publications, New York Mapping the Art (2002)