Maja Bajevic
MAJA BAJEVIC, Le Voyage, video still, 2006
Maja Bajevic lives and works in Paris and Sarajevo, currently a DAAD fellow in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited widely in many international exhibition, among others including solo shows: Home Again, National Gallery of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Sarajevo, 2006; Stockholm Revisited with a Haiku, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2005; Step by step, PS1, New York, 2004; La Mina, MACBA, Barcelona, 2004; Good Morning Belgrade, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade. Selected recent group exhibitions include: Documenta12, Kassel, 2007; Moscow Biennial, Moscow, 2007; Paranoia, The Freud Museum, London, 2007; Art, Life & Confusion, Belgrade, 2006; The Government, secession, Vienna, 2005; 50th Biennale di Venezia, Bosnian Pavilion, Venice, 2003; 7th Istanbul biennial, Istanbul, 2001; Manifesta 3, Borderline Syndrome, Ljubljana, 2000…
Le Voyage
“Le Voyage, 2005 is a work that deals with immigration. Actually with the split in between the immigrants’ dream of a better life, better situation, even better self and the reality. I tried to express it through a combination of a Hollywood classic ‘Casablanca’. It functions on two levels: there is the level of the dream/reality bipolar, the dream factory Hollywood and the reflection of it in reality, or rather the disturbed reflection of reality that you have in Hollywood. Something like the picture of Dorian Gray where the picture reflects reality (as art tends to) and the Hollywood ‘real-life’ representation is the dream. Secondly, in the film Americans and Europeans are hiding in Casablanca during WWII. The situation was the opposite of what it is now. In the film a Moroccan man says “...unfortunately with these unhappy refugees, it will take us years to get rid off them…” This is an attitude that is common in the ‘first world’ nowadays. On the other hand today, when they would perhaps need to come to Europe or to America, the trip is somewhat different, and the dream often finishes in a nightmare.
The situation is, as in other works of mine, local. It deals with the crossing from Morocco to Spain, but it tries to talk about immigration in general. It is the same dream that moves people all over the world.”
From the interview with Maja Bajevic by Predrag Pajdic, March, 2007