MaiYap is a multidisciplinary Chinese Panamanian artist based in Miami, Florida. A self-trained painter, she began her practice in 1992, forging a distinctive visual language grounded in transformation and resilience. Her path informs an intuitive yet rigorous approach, expressed through innovative installations, palette knife paintings, and multimedia works. She often incorporates everyday objects drawn from her life experiences and multicultural background to expand her diverse visual language. Notable solo exhibitions include A House of Small Altars at Edge Zones, Miami (2026), Sustrato at the Municipal Museum of Cartago, Costa Rica (2024), and Eco-Aesthetics in Motion at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas, Miami (2024).
She is the recipient of the Green Space Miami Award (2024). MaiYap taught at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden from 2007 to 2022, founded Palette Knife Artists of Miami in 2013 and is the actual volunteer art curator at Biscayne National Park.
Over the Moon
311 sculpted mooncakes, wood “batea” tray, wood boxes, 26” x 40” x 18”
As a child, mooncakes were one of the gifts I most eagerly awaited each year. A delicious treat filled with lotus seed paste meant to be shared and offered to others. Through this simple ritual, I learned that giving can be an act of love, generosity, and cultural continuity, strengthening family and community bonds while preserving traditions as sanctuaries of
belonging and memory. I was also fascinated by the mooncake’s deeper history as an object that, during the 13th century, carried hidden messages in resistance to Mongol rule, transforming an ordinary object into a symbol of resilience and collective hope.
In this installation, I combine the joy of this Chinese celebration with the meditative labor of repetition to evoke gratitude and renewal. Set within a traditional batea tray from Panamá’s Bayano Indigenous people and U.S. vintage military ammo boxes, the mooncake sculptures are grounded in my tricultural upbringing, shaped by Chinese heritage, Panamanian nationality, and American influence. Their circular form, echoing the full moon, symbolizes unity, wholeness, and the cycles of life. Inspired by my mother’s teachings and the traditions of the Mid-Autumn Festival, this work becomes an invitation to pause and a reflection on connection, offering a quiet space for the enduring bonds that sustain us across time
and distance.
