Maria Metsalu (b. 1990) is an Estonian choreographer and artist, who graduated from SNDO (School for New Dance Development), Amsterdam in 2016. Metsalu considers performance as a radical space capable of creating new meanings and ways of seeing. She views performative experiences and performing deviance as possibilities through which one may reflect upon the state of things and become inspired to act, and through which collective memory can be created. She is interested in an emancipated audience and how the position of the spectator can be challenged, destabilised or abolished altogether. Her work seeks to proliferate meanings rather than systematise them into a clarity. Metsalu has an ongoing interest in the production of her own persona, self-mythologisation and autopoiesis. Through performative works that place her own body in the epicentre, Metsalu uses her body to explore contemporary issues, and often employs sexually loaded means of expression. Besides her solo work she is one of the founding members of performance collective Young Boy Dancing Group.