Maria Niro is a New York City-based artist, and filmmaker whose work crosses several disciplines: film, video, photography and sound. Her moving image work includes long form documentary, and experimental shorts. Her current work The Art of Un-War released in 2021 is a feature-length documentary exploring war, trauma, and displacement through the work of avant-garde artist Krzysztof Wodiczko.
Niro's films touch upon various social issues including voyeurism, surveillance and the camera in Station to Station (2020); political tension In an Alien Land (2018); war, technological innovation and mass destruction in Glitch Telemetry (2011); the voiceless disenfranchised in Amerika Reflect (2010); collective consumption in Torso (2011), among others. To date, she's completed over 41 short films with original sound she's created, including video art shorts for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts website.
Her video art films weave together found sound, images, and poems, to create a collage of aural and visual prose. She blends poetic visuals and sounds with non-narrative forms in both her film and photography work but also experiments using traditional narrative forms.
Niro's films have screened and exhibited worldwide including at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, European Media Art Festival in Germany, Whitechapel Gallery UK, WNDX Festival in Canada, Anthology Film Archives, Exit Art Gallery, Millennium Film Workshop, Video DUMBO, Los Angeles Art Organization, Festival Internacional Del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano CUBA, The Berlin International Directors Lounge, and many others. Select scenes from The Art of Un-War have been projected at museums and art centers across the world including DOX Center for Contemporary Art in Prague, Museum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland, the Museum of Modern Contemporary Art in Seoul Korea, and at FACT, Liverpool during the Liverpool Biennial 2016.
Niro studied Film and Media Studies at The New School for Social Research/ New School University. She has served on the Board of Directors at The New American Cinema Group / The Film-makers' Cooperative in New York City. She proudly serves on the advisory board of More Art, a nonprofit organization that supports collaborations between professional artists and communities to create public art and educational programs that inspire social justice. She lives and works in New York City.
Niro's films touch upon various social issues including voyeurism, surveillance and the camera in Station to Station (2020); political tension In an Alien Land (2018); war, technological innovation and mass destruction in Glitch Telemetry (2011); the voiceless disenfranchised in Amerika Reflect (2010); collective consumption in Torso (2011), among others. To date, she's completed over 41 short films with original sound she's created, including video art shorts for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts website.
Her video art films weave together found sound, images, and poems, to create a collage of aural and visual prose. She blends poetic visuals and sounds with non-narrative forms in both her film and photography work but also experiments using traditional narrative forms.
Niro's films have screened and exhibited worldwide including at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, European Media Art Festival in Germany, Whitechapel Gallery UK, WNDX Festival in Canada, Anthology Film Archives, Exit Art Gallery, Millennium Film Workshop, Video DUMBO, Los Angeles Art Organization, Festival Internacional Del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano CUBA, The Berlin International Directors Lounge, and many others. Select scenes from The Art of Un-War have been projected at museums and art centers across the world including DOX Center for Contemporary Art in Prague, Museum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland, the Museum of Modern Contemporary Art in Seoul Korea, and at FACT, Liverpool during the Liverpool Biennial 2016.
Niro studied Film and Media Studies at The New School for Social Research/ New School University. She has served on the Board of Directors at The New American Cinema Group / The Film-makers' Cooperative in New York City. She proudly serves on the advisory board of More Art, a nonprofit organization that supports collaborations between professional artists and communities to create public art and educational programs that inspire social justice. She lives and works in New York City.