Multidisciplinary and experimental artist, passionate about visual arts, performance, writing, poetry film and land art. Experimental indie film-maker, visual and installation artist, lover of visual poetry and moving bodies.

Artist Statement:

My practice is reflexive and expansive, in the sense that the subject matter I work on relate to my personal encounters and experience in the world; but it also expands outwards to the audience and the wider community by engaging with their personal and social memories and experiences and our place in ecology and nature.

Through interdisciplinary performative work, I hope to reach out to people in different walks of life and engage with actions to take steps towards positive transformative changes at personal and communal levels.

I have lived by the sea or by the waters at various times of my life. Conceived inside my mother’s womb in Hawaii, born in Singapore, brought up in Hong Kong, all close to the sea shore, later studied near the cliffs of Duino by the Adriatic sea in Italy and then lived close to Rotherhithe and Tower Bridge next to the Thames in London for some years. Now returned to home in Hong Kong. Other major places of influence: mainland China, Indonesia, Ethiopia, India, Spain and the US.

Current work:

With support from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Maria has worked on her solo exhibition "Trees in the Water: Lifting Veins of Breathing Light" of experimental poetry films and visual art installation in Cattle Depot Artist Village (2022), JCCAC L1 Gallery (2023) and screened her eco-poetry films in Kino Screening Room, Eaton Hotel (2023).

Maria has developed poetry films and experimental films focusing on the moving body and live performances in different places of Hong Kong, including: Yau Ma Tei: Self-Portrait in Green (an earlier version screened in Hong Kong with the Littlebreath Theatre's multimedia site-specific show), Lifting Veins of the Breathing Lights (live performance art), Listen to the Colours of the Wind (poetry film), Bougainvillea in Bloom (video performance, earlier version with live performance at TEFO community theatre show) and Dreams of no names (surrealist documentary).

<Voyage of the Phoenix-Stone inside a Cage> is the first poetry film made by the director, originally as part of a MA in Visual Arts graduation project with the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University in 2018, but later reworked and expanded with footage of live performance in the space where the performative installation with the poetry film took place.

Previously, she worked on collaborative exhibition/ performance installation on the theme of Ecology as part of Zurich-HK Transcultural Collaboration (2017), including performances and mixed media video and performative installation exhibition in Hong Kong: Mirror of Emptiness (X** Gallery) and Floating Identities (Connecting Space) and Kowloon Park – You are What you Eat (Kaitak Campus, AVA).

Her BA in Archaeology and Anthropology (First Class) with the University of Oxford has a focus on visual anthropology and the anthropology of art, movement, migration, identity and representation.