Maia Liu (b. 1999, based in Rotterdam) is an artist working with experimental film, exploring tensions between individuality and relationality in the formation of identity. Her work often revolves around mirrored or merging perspectives—a recurring poetics of doubling that reflects how the self is shaped through others. Approaching film as a practice of compassion, she focuses on subtle, everyday gestures through which the camera moves as a character in itself, revealing the friction between autonomy and connectedness, self and other, the personal and the collective. Aesthetic and ethical concerns are deeply entangled, particularly in relation to friendship, migration, and the responsibilities that come with representing others.

maia.liu@gmail.com



  
GROUP EXHIBITIONS/SCREENINGS 

2025
“Dialogues with the Shadow”, Jihuo art Space, Chengdu (CH). 
 “Formula 1”, Woonhuis van De Ateliers, Amsterdam (NL).
“Staging Subjectivity, Experimental Films in Autoetnography”, The Night Aquarium, Los Angeles (VS). 
“Traversing the Borderlines: Intimate Accounts of Perpetual Encounters”, curated by Asian Movie Night (NL) during Qyzqaras Film Festival, Almaty (KZ). 
“MINT CFF” filmfestival at Keswick (UK). 
2024  “HiShorts!” filmfestival in Xiamen (CH). 
“Palakaka”, Guangzhou (CH).    
 “Field Recordings 4”, filmfestival at WORM, Rotterdam (NL).    
 “Arty Party”, Melkweg, Amsterdam (NL).
 “What Flows Between Us”, SpareWheel, Brussels (BE). Curated by Maia Liu and Ruby Reding.
 “In Every Cacophony There is Harmony”, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (NL).
2023  “KAMOULOX”, RIB, Rotterdam (NL).
2022 “Two Steps Too Far”, Glazen Gang, Ghent (BE). Curated by Maia Liu and Kristof Thomas.
 “(UN)BROKEN”, Zwarte Zaal, Ghent (BE).
2020     “Gebruiken en gebreken”, for Rπ, Ghent (BE).
2019 “Let’s Call It a Day”, Handstand und Moral, Leipzig (DE).


PUBLICATIONS

2025 The Bodhi Tree in Bosch’s Garden in “De Spijtige Herder” curated by Vincent Geyskens, Nel Aerts, Jan op de Beeck, Arne Bastien, Het Balanseer, Ghent (BE), p.76-106. 


PRESS

2025 ITV UK Press as part of the MINT CFF Filmmakers selection
Siria Falleroni, Documentary Review: The Bodhi Tree in Bosch’s Garden by Maia Liu, in Asian Movie Pulse  


PRIZES/NOMINATIONS

2024  Nominated for ‘Best Experimental Short’ with ‘The Bodhi Tree in Bosch’s Garden’ at the “HiShorts!” filmfestival, Xiamen (CH).
2022Nominated for Horlait-Dapsens price 
Nominated for KASK Legacies price


EDUCATION

2022–2024    MA Fine Arts, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam
2019–2020    Erasmus exchange, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst: Fine Arts, Leipzig
2017–2022     BA & MA Visual Arts: Fine Arts Painting, KASK School of Arts, Gent