Maciá won the Golden Pear at the 2018 Art & Olfaction Awards for his experimental work with scent; in 2015 was awarded a public commission for the city of Bogotá, creating the first public sound sculpture in the southern hemisphere; and in 2011 received the prestigious first prize at the 2011 Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador.

Maciá grew up in the Caribbean city Cartagena de Indias where in 1976 he attended the School of Fine Arts at the age of 16, graduating in 1980.

[4] He works with smell, regularly collaborating with a master perfumer to create unique scents in response to his research.

Often he uses familiar objects to hold the olfactory component - for example in 'Memory Skip'[6] (1995) an industrial dumpster, in 'Under the Horizon' (2010) a bathtub and in 'Library of Cynicism' (2014) a series of aquaria.

[7] In 2018 Macia presented a new work in the first Riboca Biennial[8] in Riga, Latvia and was nominated by Office for Contemporary Art Norway for an Article Residency[9] in Svalbard.

This sound installation comprises sixteen speakers that play a symphony of two thousand birdcalls from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe.

in 1999; Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2000; Event Uppsala, Sweden in 2000; Tirana Biennale, Albania in 2001; Afroamerica, Haiti in 2002; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid in 2003; The Power Plant, Toronto in 2003; Haunch of Venison, London in 2004; at the Daros Collection, Zurich in 2005; and at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 [12] At Manifesta 9 in Belgium (2012) Maciá presented 'Martinete' (2011–2012),[13] an olfactory-acoustic sculpture that he began researching for the 2011 Porto Alegre Biennial[14] in Brazil.

Located in the tunnel of a disused coalmine, this sculpture is composed of the sounds of five anvils being struck in a repetitive slow rhythm, called martinete.

In 2000 Maciá was commissioned to make one of the first smell-sculptures ever presented in a museum for the exhibition Continental Shift, A Voyage Between Cultures at Ludwig Forum International Kunst in Aachen, Germany.

Maciá has a long-standing collaboration with Senior Perfumer, Ricardo Moya of International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. Maciá's 'Trilogy for Three Timbres', commissioned in 2016 by Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo Mexico], was created through a collaboration with Dr Fernando Montealegre-Z, Reader (Associate Professor) at the University of Lincoln, School of Life Sciences, Joseph Banks Bioacoustics Laboratories, and the composer Edmar Soria.

The installation for Maciá's 2004 sculpture 'Surrounded in Tears', commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial, was made in collaboration with the composer Michael Nyman and the designer Jasper Morrison.