MAYA LE BARS

MAYA
LE BARS

PARIS, FRANCE
2025

November 23, 2025 at 9:27:28 PM

Born in Paris in 2001, Maya Le Bars develops a practice weaving together photography, writing, and video. By subverting their inherent utilitarianism, she focuses on the interstices of the visible—those spaces where the unconscious projects and interprets reality. In her hands, the mundane becomes the stage for a latent surrealism.

Maya Le Bars began her trajectory through a rigorous academic immersion, first in literary classe préparatoire before pursuing a dual degree in Art History and Law at La Sorbonne. She eventually abandoned the institutional path in favor of plastic creation, which she honed at HEAD – Genève within the Atelier Re/Production. Her encounters—ranging from traditional collectors to emerging figures of the alternative scene—coupled with her feminist engagement, nourish a critical reflection on the status of the artist and the necessity of operating hic et nunc.

THE IMAGIC BECOMING

Maya Le Bars conceives of her work as an imagic becoming: an ontological state that precedes, or substitutes for, materiality. For her, the image is not necessarily a fait accompli; it can linger at the threshold of a dream or a memory, remaining a fantasy or even a failure. The act of production is a visceral attempt at existence. She mobilizes the apparatus—the chemical process of film, print, or mere scripturality—to give it form. Her aesthetic strives for purification. Her frames, often pierced by a sense of nostalgia and solitude, tend invariably toward abstraction and silence. Among her decisive influences, she cites Sophie Calle.

SLN: Your favourite virtue?
M. L. B. : Looooove

Maya Le Bars conceives of her work as an imagic becoming: an ontological state that precedes, or substitutes for, materiality. For her, the image is not necessarily a fait accompli; it can linger at the threshold of a dream or a memory, remaining a fantasy or even a failure. The act of production is a visceral attempt at existence. She mobilizes the apparatus—the chemical process of film, print, or mere scripturality—to give it form. Her aesthetic strives for purification. Her frames, often pierced by a sense of nostalgia and solitude, tend invariably toward abstraction and silence. Among her decisive influences, she cites Sophie Calle.

THE DESERTED PLAINS

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THE DESERTED PLAINS

SLN: A deceased personality you would like to share a day with?

Maya Le Bars: Dora Maar and Dora Jaar.

Within her abstract explorations, Le Bars accords a central place to the vegetal. The recurring motif of structures implanted in deserted plains haunts her work. Her Super 8 films and the majority of her photographs impose themselves upon her during her travels—amidst nature and unfamiliar topographies far from her habitual living spaces. For a long time, she resisted this fascination with nature and the over-presence of green, fearing the banality of her own gaze. Ultimately, she embraced this novice eye, allowing us to share in her rediscovered wonder.

Populating these deserted plains, Maya Le Bars creates a dialogue between the studio space and the collective creation it fosters, her creative peers, the music world and touring alongside her partner The Doug, and the experience of filmmaking and meeting documentary directors. Crucially, she also makes space for the feminist commitment she shares with the militant structures she navigates.

Us: Do you wish to be a star?

Maya Le Bars: YES (no) (?).

Saints la Nuit is delighted to count Maya Le Bars among its key collaborators.

For all project inquiries and creative developments: contact@saintslanuit.com.