​​Maya Hirasawa（平澤）Brauer (b. 1997) of HRSWstudios is a visual artist working across a diversity of media, with a foundation in drawing and painting. Born in Tokyo amongst the bright neon lights and character faces, HRSWstudio’s work lies somewhere between cute and unsettling. Painting images inspired by their personal experiences as a non-binary queer person of color, HRSWstudios investigates the nudeness of human relationships - the tension, the connection, the falling apart and coming together. Attempting to access the surreal and cosmic plane of each relationship, these paintings cut into the slice outside of the visible realm to reveal the creatures behind every scene. Human souls are often depicted in art as non-human, and in HRSWstudios’s work these organic beings often fight, play and intertwine on structured platforms of tiles and grids. The deformation of the humanoid creatures represents the body othered by queerness and ethnicity, questioning the white ethnocentric canon of western art. At times the subject and at other times the background, diverse color ranges form a spectrum that radiates with unique frequencies, bringing energies to the forefront of the work. HRSWstudio’s work has been shown internationally, and also includes video, sculpture, installation, writing, and animatronics.