top of page

Out of Maya

a visual biography*

* Out of Maya was my final project for the M.A. in Visual Arts and Fashion at the University of Venice, Italy.

Out of Maya is a journey that started from my desire to work on the controversial and deeply fascinating figure of Maya Deren: poet, filmmaker, director and artist, active in New York in the '40s.


I wanted to start from the intellectual Deren: the writer, the filmmaker. By watching her movies, studying her research materials and reading her essays, I tried to understand her way of working and the direction that her experimental filmmaking took.


In turn, I tried to experiment and create a new vision of her - looking for a new point of view to describe her personality that oscillated between the mystical and the religious, the exotic and the suspended.

The goal was reconstructing her deepest identity, without putting some label on it, but rather by leaving it in a free and creative space, ‘out of time'.


The end result is a book/map, my personal vision of Maya Deren.

I worked on original pictures that I received from the Maya Deren archives at the Boston University and I used collage techniques to try and express  her way of being a woman, unconventional and experimental Director and Performer.

Project designed and created by Valentina Granello

bottom of page