Chiaki Maki graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1985, and worked as a freelance textile designer in NewYork. She set up the Maki Textile Studio in Tokyo, Japan, in 1990, and started visiting India for her weaving. The Maapai Project was started by her in 1997 along with Ishigaki Akiko and Masago Michoyi – a project to create contemporary clothing based on the Eastern Asian traditional materials and styles, with a Maapai show held in NewYork in 1998. Chiaki taught weaving at a workshop held by Sheila Hicks – ‘Textile Tomorrow’ – at the design school Madessa in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2000. She set up Ganga Studio in Uttarakhand in 2010, and thereafter commenced the building of a new weaving workshop at the foothills of the Himalayas designed by Bijoy Jain, Studio Mumbai, in 2012, where the Ganga Maki Textile Studio was inaugurated in 2017. Set in the picturesque foothills, the 2.5 acre studio is also the site for growing fibres and natural dye materials like indigo, and for yarn making, dyeing and weaving. Chiaki held an art textile exhibition titled 'Alchemy of Weaving' at Assaab One Art Gallery, Milan, Italy, in 2019; and a Maapai exhibition at Bijoy Jain's Studio Mumbai in 2024.