Maja Bekan is a performance and visual artist from former Yugoslavia, based in The Netherlands. Bekan’s work explores and questions the potential of mediation and delegation of the (art) work. She is interested in a collaborative and social approach and how taking part can create a productive stage, exploring more closely the personal histories, truths, economies, and social relations within it. The protagonists of Bekan’s work are often women: artists, activists, students, retirees, and people seeking a place for themselves in difficult circumstances. Bekan works on long-term research-based projects that involve different levels of collaboration, presented to the public in the form of performances, specifically created environments, video/audio/text-based installations, and public conversations.

Bekan received a master’s degree in Fine Art at Piet Zwart Institute & Fine Art at the University of Plymouth (2008). She was a co-founder and developer of the Rotterdam-based artists’ initiative ADA, Area for Debate and Art (2008/2017). In 2008 she initiated a long-term research project ‘P for Performance’, as a method of initiating situations and using performance as a tool for investigating collective intimacy and performance as a stage of knowledge production.

Golden Party

Ongoing since 2011
Video, 109’ & Constructed Situation, variable time

Golden Party documents the Tupperware-like sales parties for gold or cosmetics that my mother used to host in the family’s Belgrade apartment. The constructed situation and  video intervention is a loving parody of these domestic events. It also takes a critical view of the prevailing schemes for economic self-sufficiency and emancipation, especially those for women. The larger socio-economic system these women are part of deals with productivity and self-improvement. This is also the story of the women in the video, getting together during Serbia’s long financial crisis. They are creating an economic support network and alternative vision of solidarity in their homes showcasing interdependency, value of friendship, support and care for and with each other.

With: Divna Bekan, Senka Deretic, Dubravka Kurbalija, Biljana Miletic, Darka Simovic, Mirjana Stankovic, Dragana Vucic.

P for Performance

It is a durational research performance during which few works occurred, such as:  A series of unexpected incidents, Social Room and Performance Class.

A series of unexpected incidents

2014-2017
Constructed situations, theater play and HD film
HD video 46’00”

With: Krystyna Cirko,Grażyna Cychowska,Alina Doroszkiewicz,Jerzy Kaczyński,Maria Puciata,Jan Rybczyński and Szymon Stępniak

In September 2014, I started collaborating with Stowarzyszenie Oleandry (a self-organized neighborhood group) and supported by CCA/A-i-r Laboratory, launched and filmed our inquiry into the missing sculpture. I organized a set of educational and performative actions for the participants which included: a visit to Bialystok’s Karney Museum, a visit to Królikarnia (National Sculpture Museum), and the museum’s storage with Alicja Gzowska and Agnieszka Tarasiuk and lecture by Joanna Turowicz on Alfons Karny as an artist and as a social activist. ‘P for Performance: A series of unexpected incidents’ is a constructed situation involving seven from Stowarzyszenie Oleandry creating a plot around the disappeared sculpture and mediating encounters with my work and art they engaged in during this period. It was developed for a theater stage at CCA, Warsaw. The work includes space intervention, objects, and performance by Stowarzyszenie Oleandry. The video was made during the dress rehearsal. We see the ensemble making the P for Performance: A series of Unexpected Incidents theatrical event. We see the group reconstructing the history of the search for a lost sculpture, a process which allows them to make this story their own, to make it an inalienable part of their biographies, as well as the square, that they inhabit and care for. Delving into what would appear to be a minor story at various points in the action, with various subjects speaking, is not representing the sphere of politics, but it does provide the space for a political act on a micro-scale.

Social Room

2017
Constructed situation and delegated performance
variable duration

An ongoing performance of gallery security staff:  Anna Borowska, Hanna Karykowska, Ewa Kiełbus, Agnieszka Kłos, Maria Mirkowska, Zofia Nadolna, Renata Obielak, Anna Ochnik, Janina Tymińska, Aldona Winkowska.

Note: During the two months period regular weekly sessions of English lessons were organized in the space for the guards within the site-specific installation including custom-made furniture and text.

conceived by the artist and designed by Magdalena Siemienowicz, manufactured by Leszek Nowosielski.

Performance Class

2017
site specific (social) installation with light, floor intervention, paint, objects, construction elements, costumes, text and performance of variable size, material and time.

An ongoing performance of seven artists working to contribute with a proposal of new artwork for the empty plinth at Oleandry Square. Contributors: Dana Chmielewska, Ryosuke Imamura, Aleksandra Klimczak, Aneta Spirydowicz, Gabriela Novak, Dominika Olchowik, Justyna Pianka.

The site-specific installation includes costumes and construction elements designed by the artists and executed by Magdalena Siemienowicz (architectural design), Kamil Gałecki (metal constructions) and Piotr Marciniak (wooden constructions).

Throw Like a Girl

2022/2023
(photo documentation of rehearsal, space intervention and film)
HD video (56’39”) & Constructed situation  with space intervention including light, gold curtain, paint, carpet, objects, costumes, text and rehearsals.
Variable size, material and time.

With: Gabriela Dávalos Aray (artist and educator); Darly Benneker (artist, educator and project coordinator); Zosia Nowakowska (designer); Claudia Redout (Lieutenant Colonel at the Royal Netherlands Army, veteran); Amy Son (Royal Navy Operational Service communications Sailor 1, veteran); Rinke Wagenaar (Captain in the Royal Netherlands Army); Aletta van der Eijk (TENT marketing & communication coordinator) and various members of team Tent

Throw like a Girl offers a setting and stage for a group of collaborators to delve into the relationship between art, feminism, and conflict. The starting point is the life story of Jeanne Merkus, a Dutch philanthropist and activist who decided to take up arms and join the Herzegovina uprising against the Ottoman occupation in 1875, leading soldiers in battle. Over the years, the perception of this historical figure has shifted from heroine to outcast in Balkan public memory and from guerrilla soldier to housewife in popular culture. I convened, through an open call, a group of women from the two different worlds of the arts and the military. Together we reflected on the work and roles women perform and how times of conflict have paradoxically created space for emancipation and personal development. In doing so, together we learned about one another’s professional fields, life choices and commitments. TENT Contemporary art space was used as a hybrid space for intimate and public gatherings, conversations, exercises, and rehearsals, and we worked collaboratively towards performance which eventually resulted in a film work