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.
She was an artist in residence at ISCP New York, Delfina Foundation London, AIR Laboratory (U-jazdowski) Warsaw, IFP Beijing China, and AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz. She has exhibited work at Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Tent, Rotterdam, ISCP New York, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Kunsthaus, Graz; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Melly (former Witte de With) Rotterdam, Casco Art Institute among others.