Maia Liu

Maia Liu (born 1999) is a Rotterdam-based artist who uses experimental film to explore the tensions between individuality and relationality in identity formation. Her work often revolves around multiple perspectives that mirror and merge—a poetics of doubling that reveals how the self is shaped by the other. A key source of inspiration lies in the Old Germanic word frî, which means "free," "beloved," and "equal." This etymological intertwining makes it clear that individual freedom is not separate from connectedness, but rather springs from it—an idea she attempts to make tangible in her work.
Her work departs from an open space, without a predetermined moral framework, in which aesthetic and ethical questions don't arise purely theoretically but develop through the relationships she forges with participants. In intimate collaborations, where everyone plays themselves, relational dynamics emerge that form the core of the work and resonate with broader societal processes of migration, collaboration, and connection.
For Maia, film is a practice of compassion, a way to explore the boundaries between self and other. The camera simultaneously observes, reflects, and participates: a presence that creates distance and enables proximity. Like its own character, the camera exposes the friction between autonomy and connection, individual and community, the personal and the collective.