Quetzal Maucci
Lens-based Artist & Educator
Based in London, UK
Open for commissions, teaching, exhibitions, and collaborations.
Lens-based Artist & Educator
Based in London, UK
Open for commissions, teaching, exhibitions, and collaborations.
Quetzal is currently working as a Lecturer in Photography at Kingston University, where she teaches across MA and BA programmes with a focus on practice-based research, archives, identity, and representation. Her academic role includes dedicated research time and collaborative, archive-focused projects with institutions like Bishopsgate Institute and the International Center of Photography. An active member of the Sound/Image/Media Encounters research group, she contributes to interdisciplinary dialogues on visual storytelling and pedagogy.
Over the past three years, she has received multiple research grants to support work exploring memory, representation, and migration, with outcomes published in Time Magazine and exhibited internationally at PhotoVogue, Filter Photo, and Pride Photo. In 2023, she was selected for the Four Corners Fathom Residency, where she expanded her Queer Family Archive project through experimental narrative and community engagement.
June 2025
Quetzal co-facilitated a workshop with poet and writer Taylor Beidler as part of the Barbican Young Poets Showcase at the Barbican Centre in June 2025. The session, Poetry, Photography and the Role of the ‘Reliable’ Narrator, explored the relationship between text and image through exercises and discussion, inviting participants to consider how storytelling shifts across photographic and poetic forms.
Her contribution focused on themes of identity, migration, place, and memory, encouraging experimentation with narrative voice and the ways meaning is constructed between words and images. The workshop formed part of a broader day of performances and interdisciplinary exchange led by the 2025 cohort of Barbican Young Poets.
June 2025
Quetzal was a finalist for A Welcome Table at Peckham 24, a participatory long-table project conceived by Becky Warnock as part of the festival’s 2025 programme. The event, held in collaboration with Becky Warnock, and alongside participants including Sabine Hess, created a space for shared conversation around collaboration, intimacy, and trust within photographic practice.
Her participation formed part of a wider series of artist-led provocations that invited audiences to move beyond spectatorship and actively contribute to dialogue through discussion and collective mark-making. Positioned within Peckham 24’s broader theme of “coming together,” the session explored how images and relationships are shaped through care, openness, and shared authorship in contemporary image-making. For more info: https://www.bxwarnock.com/a-welcome-table
May 2025
Quetzal led Playing with Colour, a workshop at The Photographers' Gallery, where she explored the expressive and conceptual potential of colour in contemporary photography. Through a combination of guided discussion, case studies, and hands-on exercises, she encouraged participants to experiment with composition, light, and tonal relationships to develop a more intentional visual language. Her approach balanced intuitive exploration with critical reflection, helping photographers think more deeply about how colour shapes meaning and mood. The session fostered a collaborative, experimental environment in which participants expanded both their technical skills and their conceptualisation.
July 2024
Quetzal’s work was exhibited as part of the Pride Photo programme A Love Letter to Queer Resilience at Framer Framed, in collaboration with the Pride Photo Foundation. Alongside the exhibition, she took part in a public talk reflecting on her award-winning photographic practice and her long-term project By The Time She Grows Up, addressing themes of family, identity, migration, and queer lived experience.
Her project brought a deeply personal perspective to the programme, situating her work within broader conversations around representation, resilience, and contemporary queer family constructs in photography.
2022-Present
Currently, Quetzal is working as a Lecturer in Photography within the MA Photography and BA (Hons) Graphic Design programmes at Kingston University, London. She delivers lectures, workshops, and tutorials that support students in developing their photographic practices and research. She leads the photography strand, developing teaching around themes including representation, visual literacy, identity, archives, publishing, and storytelling, while encouraging students to experiment across image-making, alternative processes, critical theory, and dissemination.
She has developed collaborative projects with external organisations including archive-led projects with the Bishopsgate Institute and the International Center of Photography, as well as industry collaborations with Lomography and Newspaper Club, and opportunities for students to present and share their work through events such as Peckham 24 Book Fair and Offprint.