By turns a virtual reality animated film, an interactive pop culture experience or a work with an impact on the place of women in our societies (by questioning our view of female menstruation in adolescence), MAYA: THE BIRTH OF A SUPERHERO by Poulomi Basu and CJ Clarke is in Immersive Competition at Cannes 2024. The project has had a real career at festivals: New Voices Special Mention at Tribeca 2023, in competition at SXSW 2024… But MAYA is also a new chapter in a discussion initiated back in 2013 with BLOOD SPEAKS, 3 VR live films. Let’s take a look back at this long-term odyssey with the two creators.
Artists at the service of the visual arts
Poulomi Basu – I’m a visual artist, of all the arts. I choose the project format according to the idea I wish to express. It can be experimental or more mainstream, in the digital field, photography, sculpture… I make films and installations, with no real limits. It’s a fairly fluid practice, which is not surprising when you discover all the possibilities of contemporary art. You can choose different forms of narrative or medium.
CJ Clarke – The choice of virtual reality is no more surprising than any other. It’s the artists’ choice to be able to change, evolve and experiment without necessarily having a preferred medium. Or even without having to explain it! What’s fascinating is to see the result, like MAYA: THE BIRTH OF A SUPERHERO, when we’ve previously tackled other universes or formats. It’s a strength in the act of creation that gives us a lot of freedom.
![](https://xrmust.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/XRMust_Maya_Poster.webp)
P. B. – It’s actually quite a long way to explore all this. For VR in particular, there are several stages of discovery, work and meetings (at events like CPH:DOX or Sundance, for example) before we know where we can go. We try to find out as much as we can about embodying our characters, the attitude of viewers, interactive storytelling… In the end, it confirms a kind of vocation – or commitment – to these new media. And I’m not talking about the future of technology, but the future of creating worlds and environments that are here to stay. This is much more fundamental than the technological aspect. The intervention of technology clarifies the question of our uses, of our involvement, of the direction to take. But in the end, it’s the subject that counts.
BLOOD SPEAKS and MAYA, a shared odyssey
P. B. – BLOOD SPEAKS: A RITUAL OF EXILE is a 3-part VR documentary about women in the real world. Those who suffer from isolation, poverty, their living conditions, and can’t express themselves. We start with the idea of blood and women: menstrual blood, of course, but also postpartum blood… We meet teenage girls living on farms, trying to study at school, and often fully active in supporting their families, facing bullying and punishment just for being menstruating women. Some people give birth at a very young age, and are sometimes immediately separated from their child. There are fundamental questions of identity, maternity, health… They often experience an exile of identity, in their own bodies, with a lot of violence and far from what we can imagine in the Western world. This is a fundamental issue in the age of climate change, when reproductive rights are even more essential to regulate our planet, or when we look at the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The fate of women in these extreme conditions must become central to our questioning.
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P. B. – It was a photographic project that enabled me to meet these 3 women, and to imagine what I could do in virtual reality. We wanted to continue the discussion with people discovering our photographs and these VR films. This enabled us to circulate our work, raise funds and forge partnerships with humanitarian organizations. And we wanted to continue with a more interactive chapter, which became MAYA: THE BIRTH OF A SUPERHERO.
CJ C. – We have to realize how violent our societies are towards women, and how ignorant we are of what’s going on outside Western society. In MAYA, the heroine is of South Asian origin, with mystical powers that enable her to fight against the harassment and violence of the outside world as she menstruates for the first time. We can accompany her through several chapters to better understand the situation, in a highly illustrated way.
![](https://xrmust.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/XRMust_Maya_Still03-1024x576.webp)
A dynamic, well-illustrated story
CJ C. – Virtual reality as a medium allows us to engage the user in a very active way. Our point of view is to offer a playful experience that leaves no room for boredom – while retaining a strong subject. We needed a story that could have this in-depth discourse, while offering something dynamic and full of color. The fact that we have superpowers contributes to this “pop” ambition, which dresses up the experience without detracting from its meaning.
P. B. – It had to be fun, and to support our message we used figures from Asian and Southern mythology. There are Chinese references, Indian references, South American references… It’s almost a reflex for us to be able to use them in the conception of the story. There are stories and sequences that are less realistic. But in the end, it all has to speak to the viewer, who can identify with the story and the adventure on offer. In each case, the suggestions must be in line with the feelings we’re looking for. The viewer is really the hero of the story, which remains very dreamlike.
![](https://xrmust.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/XRMust_Maya_Still02-1024x576.webp)
P. B. – I was keen to come up with an animation that would enrich the idea, and offer a particularly attractive universe. I’d been keen to work with Quill for some time. Coming from a visual arts background, I wanted to be able to create something natural and very organic, hand-painted. I didn’t want it to be too realistic on the train, or too sophisticated, to counteract the digital aspect of the whole thing. So we kept to a very organic, cartoonish environment, giving the story space. And color! Each scene was carefully crafted by hand, line by line. In MAYA, everything is intentional.
CJ C. – Moving into animation, it was a fantastic opportunity to bring the audience into this universe. Imagining it in real images would have been too complex. In the end, we were able to come up with original ideas and retain our freedom, mixing London landscapes, superimposing backdrops where the characters evolve, and so on.
MAYA: THE BIRTH OF A SUPERHERO, an easy-to-distribute project?
P. B. – With MAYA, we’re tackling a subject that can be problematic to get into in many countries. Other immersive experiences may show nudity, or more graphic things. But for us, it was already a question of creating a story around menstruation, blood and women. There was no need to add more ostensible layers of provocation. The notion of bodies in VR can quickly be seen in a very sexual way. And I don’t think voyeurism for the sake of voyeurism is useful in our discourse. For us, there was a fundamental question of concentrating on our subject, in particular on the representation of female menstruation, of blood.
![](https://xrmust.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/XRMust_Maya_Cannes2024-1024x576.webp)
P. B. – MAYA: THE BIRTH OF A SUPERHERO has to be able to be shown to different populations, on different continents (Africa, Asia…), taking into account what could unnecessarily provoke bad feelings beyond our subject. We’re working on an extremely political theme in itself. We’ve started circulating the work on the bangs of festivals, and the feedback has been fantastic.
CJ C. – We’ve received support from Meta through the Women in Immersive 2022 grant, which ensures free distribution on the store. We want to ensure that MAYA is distributed as widely as possible, notably through installations in museums and various immersion proposals (notably with associated exhibitions). I hope we’ll be able to reach new audiences, to bring them closer to the subject.
P. B. – And we’ve just been awarded a Unity for Humanity grant, to further develop the dissemination of the notion of impact.
![](https://xrmust.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/XRMust_Maya_Cannes2024_2-1024x576.webp)
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