Maya: The Birth (Chapter 1) is an animated Quill piece that explores menstrual taboos by juxtaposing lots of mythic and archetypal symbols with more mundane scenes of shame and exile within the context of family, schools, and the broader culture. The piece was created by Poulomi Basu and CJ Clarke, who are both artists working across a number of different media. Basu is an Indian artist and activist working across contemporary art, photography, book formats, installation, movement, sculpture, time-based media, as well as immersive media. Clarke is a British artist working across film, photography, virtual reality, and everything in between.



Their piece pushes on grammar of immersive storytelling with this combination of magical realism and dream logic blended with more traditional diegetic scenes. Basu says, "I wanted something that felt like they were literally paintings moving so a lot of the work that you see in the piece are a very magical realist way of telling the story so where you feel you're in the real world, but then there's something dystopian, something twisted, something magical happening within that. And then there's also these dream-like worlds, you know, where you enter Maya's own, like, dreams when she's sleeping and she gets the visions." The end result is spectacular spatial journey that's exploring a vitally important topic of the "restrictive traditions of her conservative family, and a world of hidden shame, stigma and taboo" around menstruation. This is chapter one that sets the broader context, and the second chapter will be diving more explicitly into transforming this shame, stigma and taboo into a superhero power.



Maya: The Birth (Chapter 1) picked up a special jury mention in the Tribeca Immersive category of New Voices. The jury statement says, "An imaginative way to tell an everyday story in a vivid world. Presenting a shift in perspective, the project opens new imaginaries with under-told narratives. This project left us on a hook and the jury is excited to see its next steps and continued development."



Basu and Clarke are certainly pushing the boundaries of spatial storytelling with this unique blend of dream logic and magical realism fused with more traditionally staged scenes. Clarke says, "It's playing with these layers and levels of perception, these levels of reality, these kind of layers and shades and nuance to make you kind of look beyond and make you feel this transportation and this journey from real, magical, and actually make you look at your reality differently."











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Music: Fatality