Mayli Amelia Wang — Biography

Kelly Jiayi Wang, professionally known as Mayli, is a Chinese-American visual artist whose path to her current career was marked by significant public controversy. Before establishing herself in the art world, she performed in adult films during her late teens under various stage names, including work for several production companies. Her father, a prominent executive at Goldman Sachs, undertook an extended effort to remove evidence of this chapter from online platforms. The trajectory of her early adulthood took another dramatic turn when she faced arrest during her first year at Georgetown University in connection with a widely publicized drug-related incident on campus. The incident brought renewed attention to her previous work, which subsequently became the subject of widespread online discussion. Following these tumultuous events, Wang retreated from public visibility for an extended period. She has since rebuilt her professional identity as a contemporary artist, now based in New York City where she continues to develop her artistic practice under her current name.