Component Exploration: Maria’s Art

Intimacy, a play by Maria

Link to full script

Maria – Artist’s Statement and Reflections

“I’m driven for that which makes us uncomfortable, breaks what we know, scares us, and challenges us. I hope to dedicate my life to telling the stories of those people that do not follow a neurotypical path and to challenge our societies to evolve and become more accessible and human.”

I am a Mexican-Canadian artist that also identifies as a Mad artist. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was six years old, and then I spent 12 to 13 years in therapy with doctors and in hospitals and going from one thing to the other one. And right now I am in Vancouver and I work here, and I create art.

I graduated from Simon Fraser University with a Major in Theater Performance and a Minor in Sociology. So part of my investigation is how society is affected by mental health issues and how it is for whoever lives with that, but also for the people around that person [who also] get affected. In my personal experience, I know that it affected my parents, and it affected my sister, and it was such a process for them to understand different levels and different areas. But also, it’s still a process for me to understand my own self. Sometimes it is easier for someone outside of you to see things than from within you.

The project I’m working on right now is called “Intimacy.” The play that I’m writing [is] about this fear of being intimate or falling in love with someone. And that’s coming from a personal perspective. Because I was really scared of falling in love with someone, it’s the most terrifying thing. Like [most] Arachnophobic people, I cannot see the spider’s web that was me.

I take what I feel, and then I try to tell a story about it. One of my teachers said in university that an artist should focus on what upsets them. And this idea of love was an obsession, for me, I truly couldn’t understand how these relationships work. I don’t think I still do. How the level of compromise was different, and how intimate someone will get, and why will someone be vulnerable with someone else. You know, to share these ideas outside of my family, I was like, “Why would I share that with someone?” It doesn’t make sense. Why would I will put myself into that position and be open in that way? So all those questions became the play that I’m writing. All those doubts and all on the fear itself then became the personalization of what I’m going through with it.