IMAGINE THE FUTURE - AMSTERDAM
Project (synopsis)
Mushroom Nature Spirit Faerie Ring Portals
This installation consists of stoneware and raku fired ceramics arranged in a circle of approximately 3m radius, as a large ‘faerie ring’ in which everyday Amsterdammers of all ages will be invited to share a song, story, or piece of music from their respective cultures. The main intention is to bring people together in community to celebrate the cultural diversity of our city within the ‘sacred space’ of the faerie ring.
Inspired by Celtic stories and tradition, the megalithic stone circles of our ancient world and a nod to the role of mycelia in upholding our ecosystems, the Faerie Ring will form a portal for enchantment, creativity and imagination. This is my wish for a living, breathing, healthy and unified city of the future.
Bio
Maia is a visual artist from central Scotland working with film, performance and sculpture.
Maia has shown her film, performance and installation works internationally, from Iceland to China, California to India, and is currently based in Amsterdam.
Maia first moved to Amsterdam at the age of five, and in the intervening years has moved between California, Norway, Scotland and the Netherlands, always returning to Amsterdam as her base, working from her atelier in Amsterdam Oost.
In the last few years she has been teaching art to thousands of primary school kids across the city, fully immersed in the vibrant cultural melting-pot that makes up the fabric of Amsterdam.
‘My classes are comprised of kids from every corner of our planet. They are the future of this city, and show the beauty of the diverse cultural and ethnic community that is woven together in this vibrant country. Every kid is full of awe, creativity and magic and lovers of stories and song. These universal gifts that we have inherited bring us together in unity in a diverse city.’
Maia’s wider body of work deals with themes of enchantment and disenchantment, the sacred and the mundane, ritual and mythology and the ways in which stories shape our experience of reality.
Maia holds an MA from the University of Amsterdam and a BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
‘For the exhibition at Amsterdam Museum, I would specifically like to propose the Faerie Ring installation as a sacred space for cultural sharing, in which everyday Amsterdammers of all ages will be invited to contribute. This as a celebration of our various cultural gifts quietly present in the city, waiting to be expressed in community in the form of song, a myth, a piece of music or a quiet meditation.
The Faerie Ring also represents a wish for our city: a reference to a more sustainable future within a doughnut economic model; the act of coming together in community and presence instead of glued to screens inside our apartments; bringing traditional and nourishing practices to the forefront and encouraging sharing and dialogue; emphasizing equality, our shared humanity and our place within the ecosystem as a part of nature; and opening up a space for magic and enchantment in the inner city, a realm of creativity and imagination in which we can birth better stories for our future.’
Project (elaborated)
Mushroom Nature Spirit Faerie Ring Portals (stoneware ceramic interactive installation)
I am currently working on and developing a large sculptural project that will form an interactive installation. The initial stoneware ceramic prototypes of this project were exhibited as part of the group shows at No Limits Art Castle, Sexyland World, Amsterdam, in March 2024, and at ‘A Maze of Art’, Loods 6, Amsterdam in January 2025. For this project I also collaborated with the Dutch costume designer Joni Steinmann to develop an elaborate costume for the performance element of this new work.
The installation will consist of large ‘Mushroom Nature Spirit’ sculptures made of stoneware and raku fired ceramics, arranged in a large circle of an approximately 3m radius. These sculptures can be exhibited both indoors and outdoors, with audience members being invited into the middle of the circle to share a story, song, musical piece, or a meditation. My role as host is to perform the opening ceremony and to hold space and guide the event, dressed in an ethereal mushroom nature spirit costume and nudging the audience into a timeless and archetypal space.
For the indoor installations I plan to work with a light and projection engineer to create a responsive growing and transmuting mycelium network projected from above onto the ceramic faerie ring, adding an otherworldly yet recognizable element to the installation, and making the invisible visible.
In my work I love the contrast of working with timeless and ancient art forms and juxtaposing this with new digital media. The last few years I have been refining my material research with ceramics, and as a medium I find it conceptually relevant for this project as it combines all the elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether) which ties in to the archetypal subject matter. I am currently also working on XL sculptures (80cm+) as an addition to the Faerie Ring.
At this scale, the mushroom nature spirit faerie rings will be an impressive and clearly defined installation, intended to inspire a feeling of awe and timelessness to the individuals invited into the inner circle that functions as a ‘stage’/ ‘venue’/ ‘portal’ or ‘sacred space’.
The inspiration for this concept came from my study of Celtic folklore and legend (especially from the region of Scotland I am from) and the significance of faerie rings as spaces ‘out of time’ and portals to other worlds. Another reference point is the megalithic stone circles of the ancient world, and the famous Mayan ‘mushroom stones’, carved with entities emerging out of the stem of the mushroom.
With a keen eye on the current state of our environment and the degradation of our soils, and the proliferating addiction to screens, this work also aims to bring people together in community, mainly outdoors, and sharing in a timeless form drawing on the old Celtic storytelling and musical traditions. I would like to invite speakers from various relevant disciplines to share within the stone circle faerie ring portal, also making connections to local schools to bring this work to all ages. This to create a space of awareness for our current climate issues and the discussion of potential solutions, and celebrating the role of mycelia in upholding our ecosystems. www.tidalspectrum.com
> Maia Lyon Daw Artist Portfolio/ CV