The first publication of project philomuse is ready! It's a combination of stories of plants that thrive away from their lands of origin and testimonies of experiences of migration. The subjective map becomes again an excellent medium for simulating both movement and connection. The illustrations (with the exception of the pistachio, which I made myself) are emojis, so commonly found in text messaging, which has become second nature for mobile populations. I can definitely see this map as part of a larger project, similar to identitours.

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From the introduction: 

"The pistachio trees, the parrots, and I, all come 
from warmer lands. This daily view becomes the 
starting point for bringing together stories of 
plants and people who have taken root and 
thrived in unexpected places, as proof that 
everything's going to be all right, as we move, 
replant, reroot – and thrive." 

Philomuse will be present at the Extraterrestrial Publishing Zine Fair, at Dokhuis, Rotterdam, on 31/01/2026.

After the Final Clash, one more image emerged, this time through a more intentional process. What looked at me from the paper was clearly a girl talking to a dragonfly in an open field. While I was writing and preparing the publication of "The Final Clash", already in love with the scroll as a publishing format, I was considering turning that second drawing into the background story of the Witch of Bubbles. Meanwhile, a friend saw the drawing and proclaimed it was a pirate ship emerging from water. That's when I decided to open the subject online, which brought a third vision, that of the baby bird with open beak, in a nest.

Effectively, "A Bird's Hunger" fuses all these interpretations, and is therefore a philomuse publication, as the collaboration element is central. Further, it is an addition not only to the saga inaugurated by "The Final Clash" but also to the scrolls, which will hopefully grow in number.

 

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A Bird’s Hunger

At the edge of the marsh, a girl with a long crinoline dress was marching among the thinning reeds, jumping over the little streams that rushed along toward the sea.

A dragonfly the color of old copper and river-glass followed the girl, and despite its frantic winging it struggled to keep up. Still it found time to tilt its head, as if the world were a riddle worth solving.

The girl, both fierce and awkward, marching like bobbing fire through the uneven marshlands, was thought by some to be a princess, coming as she did from a household of tapestries and velvet curtains, while others called her a witch, because she had been seen talking to the moon and nodding to the wind.

“They’re here,” the girl said and the dragonfly vibrated, affirming the rumors that had been moving beneath the water.

They stopped and turned their gaze to the bay. The world fell silent.

Next to them, in the crook of a sparse and naked wind-bent tree, a nest trembled. A small bird lifted its head and opened its beak to the sky but didn’t make a sound.

The girl looked from the nest to the water, and from the water to the dragonfly.

“They’re starving,” she said.

“Yes,” said the dragonfly. “What are you going to do?”

At that moment the water bulged, as if the sea were holding its breath. The featherless bird pipped faintly.

Then the water began to split, and the bow of an enormous ship rose slowly to the surface with a creaking sound, like a heavy door opening.

This was a pirate ship returning from the place where lost things go, a construct of both reality and myth, unkempt and majestic at once, its golden sails unfurled, its carved figurehead blinking free.

The girl felt the old pull in her chest: She could sense what the ship was bearing, and the bird’s hunger was the omen which told her that what she sensed was true.

The ship drifted closer, its hull scraping the shallows. The world stood still again. No crew appeared on deck but the silence wouldn’t fool the girl: She, just like the bird, just like the ship, had also known hunger – not for glory, not for gold, not for port or wind – or for food – but for a life that was yet to be lived.

She reached into her pocket for the seeds she had been saving for times of need: A seed of love, a seed of acceptance, a seed of good luck. She tossed them upward, like a priestess who tosses knucklebones in the air to predict the future. The seed of love fed the open mouth in the nest. The begging stopped.

Then the girl turned to the water. The second seed was carried by the wind to the ship. The dragonfly showed the way.

The girl raised her hand, in greeting and command. “You may pass,” she said to the ship “but never forget what you carry.”

The dragonfly traced a circle in the air above the deck. The hull shuddered. From the hold came the clanking sound of old laughter, old grief and promise dissolving into the air with the hissing sound of extinguished fire. Lighter now, the pirate ship receded silently, and the sea closed above it.

When not even a ripple remained, the dragonfly returned to the girl’s shoulder. The last seed, the seed of good luck, had remained for them to share.

“What are we, then?” asked the dragonfly, biting into its half.

The girl watched the nest that was now quiet. She watched the waters that were again still.

“I think,” she said, “We’re the ones who know when to nourish, when to listen, and when to release.”

The dragonfly shimmered, pleased.

And even though the lineage and the nature of the girl remained a mystery, the marsh that day learned her name, and in exchange gifted her her first bubble.

 

And a .pdf link.

 

 

 

Eight masks, eight labels, eight stops in the audio walk I prepared for the XPUB graduation exhibition. A site-specific transmedia installation that discusses what happens after being exposed to biases and stereotypes and how we gain agency in the creation of identity.

Identitours: A transmedia audio walk [external application]

 

The Journey
My journey starts from the definition: Words set perimeters,
but also bridge rivers, carve new paths. The map leads to wondrous
and sometimes fantastical transformations in the garden of
Buitenplaats Brienenoord: Masks — expressions of virtuality, of the
possible as a reality, built with everyday means. Audio pieces guide you
through a personal, evolving relationship with labels and exhibit the
ways in which I reject, reclaim or reinterpret words. Your walk between
points is a performative manifestation of my inner dialogue, the space
where meaning and identity are negotiated.


The Start (audio)
The start is a point in time and a point in space. Surrounded, preceded,
followed, extended, completed by other points. I have been called,
among others, “complicated”, “naive”, “strong”, “caring”, “smart”,
“stubborn”, “crazy” and “wild”. These saturated by context,
circumstance and intention words are my starting points in a journey
of performing and transforming meaning.


The Masks
Masks are used in my practice as a primary metaphor, a materialization
of the deeply personal answer to the question “What is the way out?”
of the boundaries labels set for identity. The whole process of
mask-making relates to the building and re-building of identity, to
the perpetual performative and relational process of looking at
what is available, picking and combining elements, (re-)imagining and
creating new forms of existing. Materials that are salvaged, recycled,
forgotten or not fitting anywhere else; carton, paper, scraps from
old textiles and broken toys, are used to express virtuality, an
endless potential for change and re-invention. In this sense, masks
are not used to conceal but to create space and potential.

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The publication: Shifting Identities

 

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A final take on biases: The third and last part of presenting Labels, but not for clothes focuses on "the way out" of the confines of labels. After discussing the impact of labels especially during the formative years in the first public moment, and systemic biasing in the second, this last exhibition focuses on affordances, performativity and virtuality.

 

Leeszaal in Rotterdam hosted on Monday 24 March 2025 a very important public moment.

 

Among the works exhibited was the second part of the project "Labels, but not for clothes".

 

What was presented in this installation:

A "game", demonstrating how systemic exclusion supports labeling, based on the actual directives of the latest US administration. [external application] 

A video piece with main source material TV ads from the 80's and 90's setting impossible standards that support stereotypes through repetition. The video presented (below) was silent and included footage of myself mimicking the repetitive gestures in these advertisements.

There is also a slower version of this video, that wasn't part of this exhibition but has its own charm and is a bit different, as it has sound but no footage of a person mirroring the moves and expressions they witness in the ads.

The bureaucratic, dark setting of the installation emphasized the bleak dystopia where decisions that reinforce systemic biases through repetition and exclusion, with or without words, are made.

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As part of a bigger, collective project and following the subjective map of Rotterdam this project was adapted to fit the city of Groningen. Inspired as always by infrastructure, it grew to include Eemshaven and to pose questions regarding the cost of development and of our increasing needs in energy and data. Below is the video produced from footage of Eemshaven and the city of Groningen, juxtaposing liminal and gentrified (or on the verge of gentrification) spaces and the ever-expanding energy and data factories of Eemshaven.

 

An ever-changing mobile population
Our mixed paths
Our lost orientation
Making history that soaks into
An angry earth


A greedy machine is marching
From the end of the world
A new order
A dark mirror.
 
We remain

Stoic like oaks
Entangled
In deep rooted feeling

Or

Anchored like house boats
In half-deserted ports
Rocking with the waft
The ebb and the tide.

 

 

In a playful manner, the project also speaks about and celebrates the mundane but magical corners as met by the curious eyes of a stranger.

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Here are some pictures of the project in its natural environment: SIGN Project Space, commissioned and hosted the work from 26 September to 6 October 2024. The relevant object which compliments the video was created with SIGN's DIY approach in mind. It incorporates elements of temporality, temporariness, orientation as experienced from the viewpoint of the visitor, thoughts on the big issues of the city and 3D-printed GPS logs.

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A subjective, interactive map of the infrastructure of Rotterdam. Each layer of thread represents a different level of infrastructure and each pin is connected to a touch sensor that triggers different media files related to the city and displayed on the screen in the center. One of these files contains the poetic piece "Infrastructure". The piece aims at making the viewer conscious of the networks of infrastructure surrounding her and asks her to consider her position and role in an elaborate design where everything seems to be connected. 

The work, that was completed both as an idea as well as an object with the tireless help of Rosa and Victor, was presented in S/ash Gallery, Rotterdam, from 27 June to 2 July 2024, as part of the collective xpub Special Issue #24.

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I am happy to announce that the poem "Seasons (het jaar rond)" that Alida van Leeuwen and I wrote in collaboration has been published in the newspaper LisserNieuws on October 1st. "Seasons (het jaar rond)" is a two languages experiment, and the result is quite interesting. Here is the poem (without the spelling mistake that appears in the paper):

 

Seasons (het jaar rond) - Duo dicht Maria Exarchou/Alida van Leeuwen

It starts in winter as a distracting recollection
of poppy red dispersing in the late afternoon sun.

Ik voel de eerste zonnestralen
zie zonnig geel en vurend rood
en spring vol vreugde de lente in

Riding the tip of the rainbow I shed my old skin
freed by the explosion of purple in the meadows.

De warme kleuren van de zomerse zon
geven alles een nieuwe tint
Mijn zonnebril beschaduwt de wereld

I don't want this life to end. I find closure in
silver autumn clouds: Like seasons, we'll return.

Een zucht vol winterse geuren
vullen mijn daagse dromen
De temperatuur daalt