Maria Cyber is a pioneering figure in the Greek queer scene and one of the first lesbian activists in Greece. With a background in photography, graphic design, web design, and cinematography, her work engages with sexuality from an array of perspectives. In 2000, she launched lesbian.gr, the largest online platform for lesbians in Greece. By 2007, she had founded the country’s first queer film festival, the Outview Film Festival: Athens International LGBTQI Film Festival. Additionally, she established Mindradio.gr, Greece’s first interactive web radio, which received the 2008 Ermis Gold Award in the internet category.
Maria also introduced the prominent party series Cyber Dykes (1995-2006), which began as women-only events that transformed predominantly straight, male-dominated clubs into vibrant lesbian spaces. These parties were instrumental in creating safe spaces for lesbians in Athens, a city where the community remained largely invisible at the time. Maria played a key role in introducing queer practices, such as lesbian safe sex and the use of dildos, in a cultural context that initially resisted and stigmatized them. In recent years, influenced by her personal battles with cancer and diabetes, her work has acquired an even broader sense of intersectionality, extending beyond the sphere of sexuality to engage with the body at large, and draw attention to themes of fragility, healthcare access, and (dis)ability.
Maria’s book, A Lesbian Life, created in collaboration with Eirini Dafermou, Myrto Tsilimpounidi, and Krystalli Glyniadaki, and published in 2023, offers a personal insight into her life through stories and photographs. It features narrations of her childhood, her relationship with her father, the evolution of the lesbian scene in Athens, and her observations in queer capitals like Berlin, London, and Brussels. The writing is complemented by her extensive photographic material, documenting lesbian life over the years. The second half of the book focuses on these intimate portraits, balancing private moments with public realities and capturing both the more delicate and the more raw features of her subjects.
The exhibition Maria Cyber – Portraits offers a selection of images from her photographic archive, documenting lesbian life through the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Maria’s portraits eternalize intimate moments between friends and lovers that would otherwise remain fleeting. Many are playful; subverting traditional conceptions of gender and power, while others are calm and solemn; portraying tranquil, candid moments or piercing, direct looks into the camera. As an insider documenting her own reality, her photos often have a voyeuristic quality but are always marked by a sense of care and respect. Using tight frames and close-ups, Maria focuses on her subjects rather than the surrounding environment, creating a sense of proximity and connection. Even in more staged or performative images, she allows her subjects to shape the scene organically. As she herself describes her process: “I don’t capture the face; I capture the soul in one of its expressions.”
Maria’s chosen medium of photography engages in a dynamic dialogue with queer visual culture, foregrounding lesbian visibility. Her work immortalizes her subjects within a collective queer memory and contributes to a politics of the gaze, challenging us to reconsider notions of perception, power, memory, and representation. Her photographs serve as acts of resistance against erasure, capturing moments that might otherwise fade into oblivion. They form a visual archive of a community’s struggle for recognition, documenting not only the external appearance of her subjects but also musings of their inner worlds.
Her portraits showcase the wide range of queer existence, from quiet moments of introspection to loud, defiant celebrations. They are not mere images; they are historical documents that capture the essence of a time, a place, and a movement.
Organized by Fivos Sakalis
Co-ordination: Yannis Arvanitis
Texts: Klara Tsoumpleka
Graphic design: Iliana Siarga
Lighting: Grigoris Sampanis, Kostas Svolis