Eileen Maxson (b. 1980, Long Island, New York, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist working at the confluence of video, performance, installation, and photography. Through the lens of family experience, humor, and pathos, her work confronts the American Dream and capitalism's failures, twisting their empty promises into wry reflections on media and consumer culture's impact and legacies. 


Eileen Maxson (b. 1980, Long Island, New York, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist working at the confluence of video, performance, installation, and photography. Through the lens of family experience, humor, and pathos, her work confronts the American Dream and capitalism's failures, twisting their empty promises into wry reflections on media and consumer culture's impact and legacies. 

Maxson's recent solo exhibition included "Parent Trap" at Keijsers Koning which was selected as "Best of 2024" in Glasstire.  The Word Is Not Lucky, at Galveston Arts Center focused on overconsumption's mental, emotional, and environmental burdens through the experience of helping her parents after their home catastrophically flooded during a hurricane. Sifting through and wringing out images, media, time, material "stuff," and memories, Maxson remade the experience as probing and sometimes humorous portraits of herself and her family.

Previous exhibitions and screenings of her work include Aurora Picture Show, Houston, TX; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY; Museum of Moving Image, Queens, NY; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Germany; and Light Industry, Brooklyn, NY.

Maxson has been awarded residencies at International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) (2013-2014), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), Swing Space (2013), and Künstlerhaus Bethanien (2012-2013).

She has received grants and awards from The Idea Fund, Houston, TX; Houston Arts Alliance, Houston, TX; Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Artadia Foundation, New York, NY; The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; and Centrum Beeldende Kunst, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

In 2005, Maxson was awarded the inaugural Arthouse Texas Prize by an internationally respected jury including James Elaine, Vernon Fisher, Sue Graze, Dave Hickey, Kathryn Kanjo, Shamim M. Momin, and Valerie Cassel Oliver. 

She received her BFA from University of Houston (2002), her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University (2008), and attended De Ateliers post-graduate institute in Amsterdam, Netherlands (2008-10).