Maya Gulin
- Michael Hanna
- Jul 13
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 14
Maya Gulin creates video art and video installations and has exhibited as well as participated in film festivals throughout Canada and in New York, Ireland, Portugal, Germany, and France. Notable solo exhibitions in Vancouver include Franc Gallery, Wrat Gallery, and A4 Gallery. Maya’s participation in film festivals include Marmostra International Film Festival in Coimbra, Portugal, Hallucinea film festival in Paris, CineSalon Experimental Film Festival in Cork Ireland, Bi-Anual Equinale Film Festival in Schloss Neuhoff, Germany, and 33rd Annual Girona Film Festival in Spain. Her residencies include Residency Unlimited in New York, Performing Arts Forum in St.Erme, France, and Malaspina Printmakers in Vancouver.
The key element in the short films and video installation art of Maya Gulin would be the use of light as a tool to illuminate, manipulate, and intimidate a space. Ranging from natural daylight to brightly colored artificial light, Maya directs the luminosity to shine upon and even blind her figures and still lifes contained within the videos. She also portrays strategic objects such as crystals and windows, which act as natural conduits of light. Combined with haunting digital audio and dramatic acting, her figures often represent a sense of mindfulness, melancholiness, or even despair. Ranging in depictions of a woman trapped in a solitary-confinement-cell-like interior to a man swimming in a glistening pool in the middle of the night, her actors revel in the darkness and reveal inclinations of entrapment and both open as well as confined space.
With brilliant luminosity, reflection as well as displayed on multiple surfaces through varied angles, Maya’s video installations are a sight to behold. With a variety in range of light and bright, cool colors, these videos are projected like lasers on walls, glass, and paper surfaces. Each angled distortion overlays each other creating visual effects which have three-dimensional projected qualities. Because Maya shoots her videos with a cell phone, her images often have a pixelated and grainy quality to them, adding to the obscurity of her themes and visual portrayals.
Cryptic Inertia (pictured above) remains Maya’s finest work. Through varied angles and projections, she reveals both actors and objects illuminated by brightly-colored lights. Projected in a dark room, the video installation expresses visual distortions to have the viewer reinterpret experiences. Some of the portrayals on portions of the figures may have the impression of organs, such as a heart or lung, because of the mirrored, angular, and colorful distortions in the various projections.
Maya Gulin's finest video works and video installations include Vague Dimensions, Cryptic Inertia, Bask, Circus’Circus, Dead Radiance, and Bronze. Although Maya’s video portfolio is extensive, these particular pieces reflect a sense of visual maturity seldom matched by other contemporary video artists. The complexity in the visual language, distortions, angles, and light design reflect deep philosophical and poetic inclinations on varying themes such as the purpose of optics, the relationship between light and space, and aspects of confinement. From puppets to still lifes to well choreographed scenes with actors, Maya’s varied portfolio reveals an artist with a vast range and sensitivity to the relevance of using both conceptual and technical approaches to communicate deep and complex theatrical experiences to the audience. Her works are a breath of fresh air for any individual seeking originality and varied substantive approaches in both video art and video installations.
