MARIa deniSE Yala is an artist, storitela and programmer whose work spans multiple disciplines to find new ways to tell stories of the human experience. As an interdisciplinary artist motivated by the social issues of today, I am constantly trying to find meaning within my work. My practice embraces a multiplicity of perspectives and often takes a social bent and an activist approach, interweaving themes of identity, feminism, politics, love, religion, sexuality, mental health, and Black womanhood. My latest experimental works explore the AIDS epidemic, using Augmented Reality (AR) latrinalia and a hypertext fairy tale as story formats. I hope to spark dialogue through my work.

I experiment with telling stories in unconventional formats across analog and digital realms. I hold a BSc. in Computer Science from Drexel University and a MDes. in Digital Futures at OCAD University. I am a member of CAM Collective, a collaborative research group and have worked as a Senior Web Developer at Walk With Web (2020-2025)

*CAM Collective is co-founded by three multidisciplinary artists, Carisa Antariksa, Amreen Ashraf, and Maria Yala, who are also designers, researchers and storytellers. We are a feminist collective based in Toronto, and are comprised of women of color from the global south. We center our collaborative practices in creating projects that explore the commonalities and threads we encounter through our personal, intersectional lived experiences. Our work focuses on worldbuilding, speculative storytelling, as well as researching the various ways our lives are constantly entwined with the digital. We construct immersive storytelling experiences using a myriad of technologies, which include but are not limited to, mixed reality (MR), creative coding, physical computing and interactive web experiences.

Let’s make some good trouble together! Message me for any proposals for collaborations, commissions/freelance or workshops…