Opening: 27 June 2025 at 8:00 p. m.

Curator: Alina Şerban

Conceived as a string of cinematic scenes that gravitate around the topic of labor, and how the imprint of history affected the social and political environments of Eastern European societies after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the exhibition Songs for a Better Future introduces the first comprehensive display of Matei Bejenaru’s artistic practice in Slovenia. Trained as an engineer at the end of the 1980s in Romania, Bejenaru decided in the early 1990s to follow art studies, becoming a distinct voice of his generation formed under the new specter of capitalism.

Featuring works from the mid-1990s to the present, the exhibition follows the artist’s longstanding engagement with people and places, highlighting both his situationist and poetical approach in drawing a multi-layered picture of the onset of post-communism, and of the tangible failures and divergent changes occurring in the lives of Easterners. His installations, long-term photographic projects and film essays create an intimate way of looking at the conditions of today’s world. Retaining the overwhelming feelings of hope, uncertainty and regret felt by the individuals involved as a result of the unequal and distressing social mechanisms emerging in everyday life, Bejenaru’s works address quintessential themes of Eastern European societies: the mass unemployment of workers following the collapse of whole industrial sectors, and the subsequent forced changes in career, illegal immigration and economic mobility.

In the first room, the large-format photographic tableaux that are part of the series Between Two Worlds (2009–ongoing) document technical museums, scientific labs, public spaces, and factories in Romania, offering an evocative and bold commentary on the decline of scientific research after the fall of communism. The inherent tension of images derives from their extreme realism and the elaborate camera angles used, which sometimes convert the relics of the past into peculiar objects belonging to a distant future.

In the second room, in the filmic essay From Afar (2009), Bejenaru presents a masterful portrait of loneliness, which reflects on the social phenomenon of labor mobility that affects women of all ages, coming in general from rural communities or small cities that once hosted various industries. The film tells the stories of Romanian women caring for elderly people abroad, evoking their feelings of alienation and unsettlement.

Important for Bejenaru’s artistic approach is the relationship established with his subjects. A careful look at his photographs points beyond the usual framework of documentary images, the ethical dimension of his social-artistic practice defining the parameters of representation. The selection of works from the series M3: Work, Memory, Movement (2008–ongoing) in the third room elicits reflections on the social crises triggered by the radical shifts experienced by post-communist societies.

The final room of the exhibition offers an emotional and lucid journey along a body of works that expands the boundaries of art and merges personal encounters with collective experiences, translated into conceptual explorations which take the form of public actions (Alexandru cel Bun, 1994), artistic situations (Looking for Caslav, 2002), film essays (Maersk Dubai, 2007), alternative maps (Travel Guide, 2005–2007), oversized garments (Enlarged Clothing, 2005), and choral pieces (Songs for Better Future, 2010). Here, the narratives constructed by Bejenaru allude to the intricate terrain of history and memory, to the fragile status of human geographies in a still-expanding global system. and not least to the fading of people’s prospects for a better future.

Known for his performances, film essays and documentary photographs, Matei Bejenaru is acknowledged as a representative voice of Romanian contemporary art. After engineering studies in the late 1980s, followed by art studies during the 1990s, he revived the local and regional artistic scene initiating the Periferic Biennial of Contemporary Art (1997–2008) in Iași, Romania. He contributed in establishing various institutional initiatives such as the Vector Association, supporting the local emerging contemporary art scene and the Center of Contemporary Photography in Iași (2015). Currently he teaches photography and video at the George Enescu Arts University in Iași and lectures internationally. He was visiting professor at the University of Québec in Montréal, Canada (2011–2012).

In his artistic practice, Bejenaru analyses the way globalization affects post-communist countries’ labour force and their rapidly changing mentalities and lifestyles. In his recent artistic projects, he is researching the materiality of the photographic medium and politics of representation in documentary format. Using the analogue technological platform, he is focussing on photographic process as a witness of the crisis of singularity and artistic commitment. His works have been included in exhibitions at the Design Biennale Ljubljana (2024), Central European House of Photography, Bratislava (2023), EUROPALIA Festival (2019), BOZAR Bruselj (2018), Art Encounters Biennale (2015), Athens Biennial (2013), Taipei Biennial (2008), Tate Modern London (2007), Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Art (2006), Tirana Biennial (2003) and others.

Alina Șerban is art historian, and writer, cofounder of the Institute of the Present, Bucharest and founder of the publishing programme P+4 Publications. Her research focuses on topics dealing with the history of the exhibitions, the non-linear historiographies of post-war Eastern European art and their specific theoretical and social contexts of manifestations, oral histories and artists’ archives. She contributed with texts in various journals, publications and catalogues such as Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe: A Critical Anthology (MOMA and Duke University, 2018). She was Grant recipient of Igor Zabel Award for Culture & Theory, Ljubljana (2022). Her recent projects include the publication PARKOUR. Laurențiu Ruță, Discovery Is the Main Thing (2024) and the exhibition Performing 89. States of Disillusion (2023).

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