Maya de Almeida Araujo is an award-winning director and visual artist whose work explores the human condition through our elemental relationship with nature - above all, with water.
Her practice moves fluidly between still and moving image, site-specific installation, and immersive environments: sensorial, conceptually rigorous, and consistently preoccupied with what lies beneath the visible. Each work draws from personal experience, philosophy, and science to construct imagined worlds where the boundaries between humanity and nature dissolve - asking, ultimately, how we perceive our place in the world and whether we might find our way back to it.
Born in Lisbon to Portuguese, Belgian, and German parents and based in London, Maya holds a Bachelor of Science from Imperial College. Her artistic path began through experimental underwater photography long before formal training - leading to studies at Central Saint Martins and mentorship under image-makers including Tim Flach and Lois Greenfield.
A period in high-speed cinematography and music video production gave her work its characteristic quality: technical precision held in tension with emotional intensity.
Recent projects have involved custom-engineered oceanic lighting rigs, multi-screen ultra-resolution editing, and hyper-textured ambisonic soundscapes - always built in close collaboration with architects, composers, stage and light designers, and fellow artists. It is a practice that has attracted collaborators across fine art and commercial contexts alike, from Guy Laliberte to the Osaka Expo 2025, the English National Ballet, the Akram Khan Dance Company, the Lisbon Oceanarium, the Oceano Azul Foundation, OneDrop Foundation, Orion Publishing, CHI & Partners, Y&R Branding, and MUSE.
Maya's fine art is held in public and private collections and has been exhibited and recognised in juried international exhibitions worldwide.
