Marya Mayan is a Saudi artist and art & cultural consultant based in Riyadh. Her career began in Madinah, where she studied art education at Taibah University and graduated with honours in 2015. In 2016 she joined Namaa Al Munawarah, working on its art initiatives, an experience that placed her early among artists, projects, and audiences, and drew her attention toward building the conditions in which creative practice can grow. In 2017 she organised Behance Madinah under Namaa Al Munawarah, and in the same year founded Mayan Art, which went on to become the base for a range of art programmes and projects.
Over the years that followed, Marya led more than fifty art programmes and projects, expanding her experience in project management, initiative development, and direct work with artists. That daily contact with practice turned her attention to what happens to a work once it leaves the studio: how an artist's career develops, how the value of a work is built, how it reaches a collector, and how reputation and demand move through the art system. These questions gradually became central to her work, connecting her experience as an artist with a growing understanding of the professional, economic, and institutional side of art.
In 2022 she moved to Florence for professional training in painting and sculpture at GEKO Institute of Art, adding to her academic background a more direct engagement with making and material. She then studied in London during 2023 and 2024 at Sotheby's Institute of Art and Christie's Education, two institutions carrying the names of the world's most established auction houses. Her studies at Sotheby's covered art business, contemporary art, and curating, while her work at Christie's focused on art market negotiation, acquisition and sales, art advisory, market dynamics, curating, and entrepreneurship.
That experience became the foundation of her current work as an art & cultural consultant to artists, collectors, corporates, and institutions. With artists, she works on career development, clear positioning for their practice, and strategies for pricing and market access. She advises private and corporate collectors on acquisition decisions and collection building, and has built and developed institutional collections including the corporate art collection of Jadwa Investment. In her work with cultural and creative projects, she develops the strategies and plans that carry an idea from first concept into a defined project, clear in its identity, its audience, its business model, and its capacity to sustain itself.
Marya is particularly occupied with the relationship between cultural value and viability. A creative project, in her view, needs a strong idea to the same degree that it needs an understanding of its position within its market, its audience, and its institutions. She therefore builds projects across several dimensions, including content, positioning, partnerships, revenue models, audience experience, and growth planning. Working across different parties in the art system has given her an understanding of the differing needs of the artist, the collector, the corporate, and the institution, and the ability to build strategies that gather those interests around a cultural value capable of lasting.
Alongside this path, Marya has continued to develop her artistic practice across painting, sculpture, installation, sound, video, artificial intelligence, and contemporary technologies, with the choice of medium shifting according to the nature of the idea at hand. Her practice examines the reciprocal relationship between what shapes our consciousness and what we make in the world, tracing how ideas, belief, and memory take material form, and how that form in turn reshapes perception and meaning. Her experience has extended from direct engagement with material into moving image, sound, and work grounded in emerging technologies, with the idea remaining the starting point of every piece.
In 2019 Marya received first place in visual arts within the General Entertainment Authority Award, following second place at the Fourth Scientific Conference at Taibah University in 2014 and first place at the Sixth in 2016. She has taken part in a number of art programmes and initiatives, among them Riyadh Season, programmes connected to Noor Riyadh Festival, and mentorship and cultural travel programmes, alongside participation in group exhibitions and various artistic projects.
In recent years her presence has extended into the fields of knowledge and media, where she has built a digital audience specialised in art and its market, working as a content creator and a voice in the field. Across her platforms she addresses subjects such as pricing, collecting, value building, artist positioning, career development, and market mechanics, presenting this knowledge in Arabic to an audience of artists, collectors, and people working in the cultural sector. She also delivers talks and specialised educational programmes, and has spoken at TEDx Riyadh.
Today Marya's work spans a space that brings together artistic practice, consultancy, education, and cultural project development. Her relationship with art begins with the idea and the work inside the studio, then extends to the artist's path, the collector, the collection, the institution, and the market. That range has given her the ability to see art across its full life cycle, from the moment an idea forms, through its production and presentation and the building of its value, to its position within culture, society, and economy.