Biography

Maya is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and youth worker from Nicosia, Cyprus. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Arts and is the co-founder of DISPLAYCED, an art platform hosting community events in Maastricht. Through world-building, her work questions dominant narratives around identity, displacement, and resistance.

Her research asks what it means to be a “bastard” under a theocratic ethnostate, and which identities become marginalised when one hegemonic truth governs. She approaches this pedagogically, using performance, game design, and set design to create speculative scenarios based on real systems. These participatory environments function as non-formal educational tools that invite participants to step into the position of the “other,” play in conflict, and rehearse forms of active citizenship.

By displacing the conflict of her city into a constructed, safer space and allowing people to play within it, she researches the protest aesthetics that emerge when participants navigate a replica of the Cypriot mobility, surveillance, and educational systems.She explores whether participants can develop a different (and better) visual language of peace revolution. In a context where art and propaganda have long reinforced narratives of violence, her work seeks to twist these visual codes and transform them into tools for reconciliation.

Artistic project

Welcome to the Palmanova is a participatory conflict-simulation game inspired by my city, the divided old town of Nicosia, Cyprus. It examines how borders, ethnonationalist education, and urban environments shape identity, mobility, and our capacity to peacefully counteract violent narratives. Through the game I ask participants to join an unfortunate game of geopolitics and through that perform a peace revolution.

The title Palmanova refers to the Venetian fortification of Nicosia’s old town. The game unfolds in a life-size constructed environment recreating spatial and psychological features of the old town: the UN buffer zone, the “other side," schools, watchtowers, and military presence. I first built this “city” in a squatted factory, hoping to move it to public space. Players move through borders, surveillance systems, and bureaucratic processes drawn from the Cypriot reality.

The game displaces the original conflict into a safer space to research protest aesthetics and to explore whether a better visual language can emerge for Cypriot peace activists. Through play, participants experiment with alternative ways of moving, resisting, negotiating, and coexisting.

Although “playing” in conflict is uncomfortable, it is vital as it allows us to visualise hope. Without hope, there is no resolution; without resolution, there is no future.

Format: participatory conflict simulation game/performance

Size of audience: 30-40 participants

Specific location: empty/ abandoned industrial space - for instance border crossing in Ledra street Nicosia, UN buffer zone (Ledra palace)

Timing/duration: 60-90 minutes