Madison Alexa Garay
writer + curator + art historian
based in tiguex [abq, new mexico]
writer + curator + art historian
based in tiguex [abq, new mexico]
Photo by Dominic Valdez, in Glenrio, NM/TX, 2024.
Madison Garay is a storyteller. In some spaces, she is a visual culture scholar. In others, she is a creative collaborator. Increasingly, she is a boots-on-the-ground arts and culture writer, as featured in New Mexico Magazine and Southwest Contemporary. Always, in spirit, she is a Route 66 mystic. Let's get hauntological.
Madison received her M.A. in Art History (Art of the Americas) in 2025 from the University of New Mexico. Her research focused on placemaking and formulation of regional identities in the built, vernacular environments of Route 66 through the Land of Enchantment. Madison also holds a B.A. in History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she investigated the economy of images shared online during the California wildfires.
Madison is a casual internet anthropologist, expressed through her artistic practice, where deep digital memory and web artifacts are reconstructed in video collages. Most importantly, she is a bonafide roadfan and finds most inspiration in the dirty crevices of the world. Until her camera broke (twice), she could be found shooting 35mm film on sidewalks near you. Portfolio forthcoming.
Let's connect - even if only to talk about buildings.
born. Yokut land / the Central Valley
raised. Patwin+Miwok land / the 707
based. Tiwa land / the 505
how to pronounce "Garay"?
Garay is a name with Spanish-Basque origins, bestowed upon me by way of Mexico. I will accept the following pronunciations (in this order):
gah-RAI (with a rolled /r/)
guh-RAI (with a rhotic /ɹ/)
guh-RAY (with a long /ā/)
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
from E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems: 1904-1962.