Maria Cyber
BiographyMaria Cyber is one of the first lesbian activists of the Greek Gay & Lesbian scene. She used to be for many years an active member of Greek Homosexual Community, Lesbian Group of Athens and many other LGBT groups in Greece since 1986.
She has published many of her interviews and articles concerning the lesbian and gay culture.
She has studied photography, graphic and web design and film studies. Her photo work has always been concerned with lesbian images and themes from different perspectives and she has presented her work through exhibitions and magazines.
She has also writen and directed her own trilogy of Queer Comedy in Athens. (James Bond was a lesbian - St.Claus is Gay - St.Valentine is non monogamous)
She is also the owner and creator of Proud LGBT Promotions (www.proud.gr) and one of the biggest Greek Lesbian Portal www.lesbian.gr, sending newsletters and informing weekly over 5000 members concerning the gay and lesbian international and topic news.
For the last 4 years she was running and presenting the First and only weekly Greek Gay and Lesbian Radio Show in Athens.
She organizes gay and lesbian parties and culture events since 1995 through "Cyberdykes" group, which she has created.
"My photos came into life to shock and train the city in which I was raised and been tolerated by. My photos are inspired by my beloved sex companions and they are derived from the beautiful moments I have shared with them .
By attending photography lessons and later on graphic design classes I wanted to use all the art tools I have gained in order to unveil and show the lesbian erotism that I have been experiencing all these years and which is "socially" believed to be only kisses and touches.
I regard my photography creations as military art and my pictures as flyers. For years the distribution of my provocative flyers in high-crowded places have ultimately satisfied my activistic need and expanded the barriers of tolerance in the city I live.
My artistic agony I satisfy by taking photographs. While in return the pictures crave to be destributed on the road,, to be placed on the walls , on vitrine glasses , and pass intense messages such as : a woman's ass yells "love me tender, love me true but fuck me hard" (1999)
Being bombed by a pornography made by and for straight men, I wanted to turn parts of my personal sexual life into proud ,feminine pornographic, romantic and sensual images.
A woman takes photos of her lovers in a different way than a man does. Therefore, behind all of my pictures lies an interesting story that I have to tell. I use the phallic symbol in various, unexpected ways: placed on a bathroom, on a couch, be worn by a girl in a pink negligee.
My pictures are easily comprehended because I use ordinary forms. I don't confuse the viewer with complicated lights and shadows. My photos bring out something crystal clear through a plain, almost geometrical set frame. At the same time something paradox , controversial, but so natural to me appear in them and this is how my artistic expression becomes my resistance to the social stereotypes.
I consider my recent photographic work that called "in my mum's living room" to be more mature because the image doesn't work as a flyer anymore but is plain photographic. My adolescent "revolution" has settled down and has been replaced by the same political speech but in a more sensual and gentle way.
In my mum's living room I have spent so many years and it is a place full of memories for me. It is carefully decorated so classical by mum's taste and exactly this place is the one I choose for my recent photo work. In this place that faces and feeling have stigmatize my life, I expose my lover in a way that fills the atmosphere of my erotic, my perspective of my lesbianism. The felling that satisfies my art need it is that in a typical middle class living room with the plastic flowers in the vase, the common sofa and the photos of her grand daughter on the table, all these becoming the decor for my erotic fantasies."
Maria Cyber