Maiza Hixson is a performance artist and curator currently based in Santa Barbara, CA. She is the resident Chance Encounter Specialist at the Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science, and Technology (SBCAST), a solar-powered, live/work community. Her most recent performances at SBCAST include: Dream Disaster; Running For Office; and Art Movement Desensitization and Recall (AMDR Therapy). Her most recent curatorial projects include: Campos de Ensueños: The Photography of Antonio Arredondo Juarez and Ricardo Palavecino for Channing Peake and Betteravia Galleries in Santa Barbara County and Welcome to the Anthropocene for Gallery 110 in Seattle, WA. While serving as Chief Curator of the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (DCCA) from 2010-2015, Hixson organized such exhibitions as Radical Participation: A Series of Four Interactive Exhibitions funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation; Wilmington Trap Stars: A Street Art Exhibition and Young Country: On Rural Themes in Art. Prior to working for the DCCA, she was a curatorial assistant at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia and served as Associate Curator of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati from 2006-2009 where she curated group and solo exhibitions including American Idyll: Contemporary Art and Karaoke and Marilyn Minter: Chewing Color. Hixson’s experimental curatorial video work, Oh Boy: On Men and Masculinity was featured in the People’s Biennial curated by Jens Hoffman and Harrell Fletcher, which traveled to five contemporary art museums across the United States between 2010-2012. Hixson is also co-founder of the conceptual art space, The Shaft, with Lauren Ruth. As part of The Shaft, Hixson has performed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Cannonball, Miami; The Koban in Baltimore; Little Berlin Gallery in Philadelphia; and Soap Factory, Minneapolis. Hixson studied Art History, Theory, and Criticism and Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She received an M.A. in Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of Louisville and holds a B.A. in French.