It’s not every day you find yourself riding on a giant tampon across a blood red lagoon, on your way to fight a cyclopean octopus with your bare hands. But here you are, on a journey of self-discovery – which also involves some intense face-offs with cruel teenagers and a grilling from your mother in your bedroom (to those who have grown up with south Asian parents, a trigger warning – this character is terrifyingly accurate).
Artist-activist Poulomi Basu has made a genre-bending playable artwork/ interactive virtual reality/ immersive animated film about a menstruating superhero, Maya. It would be easy to scoff at this, but Maya: The Birth of a Superhero, co-directed by Basu’s longtime collaborator CJ Clarke, is a fun and poignant coming-of-age romp that is genuinely empowering. Part superhero satire, part psychological thriller, Maya takes the participatory genre in a bold new direction.
