Saša Bezjak

The Starry Sky, 2020
embroidery on fabric, 134 x 195 cm

Under the Canopy, 2024
embroidery on fabric, 120 x 140 cm

courtesy of the artist

The dynamism of Saša Bezjak’s creative process is driven by active drawing which, from the autonomous space of the medium, confronts the wider audience with subjects that are often pushed outside the realm of art. The artist brings them closer to us and shows them as vibrant, topical, and applicable to us all. She achieves an immediacy of communication through drawing that is ascetic and refined and which she uses to disclose themes that touch on sexuality, family relationships, the role of women in society, and transience, as well as art and politics. In an unexpected way, the artist forces us to think and feel. She often uses the intimate as a starting point for her work, knowing that she is able to awaken the dormant sensibilities of the viewer through identification. In her later, more mature period she has developed a subtle sense of when to express herself with line or colour, what sort of drawing style to use to present certain ideas, and what technique to choose to appropriately reinforce the sensual. She confronts us with various, also alternative, forms of work or ways of collaborating in the creative process, exploring the unusual ways that artwork can communicate with the audience. With her immediacy and restless inquisitive spirit that leads her from the depths of the psyche to societal subjects and to reflections on global art history or the cultural history of the area in which she lives, Bezjak represents an exciting artistic position which is, also due to its radicality, impossible to overlook. (Nadja Zgonik)

In the framework of the EMPACT project, Saša Bezjak developed a series of 21 original drawings on textiles. The drawings were inspired by photographs by Terezija Mostler (1881–1961), a pioneering Slovene photographer, who spent part of her life in Trate, Slovenia. The photographs depict a now distant way of life in the Slovenian countryside of the past. During a workshop on the topic of empathy for nature at the Museum of Madness Trate in September 2023, participants embroidered the drawings onto the fabric. The series of drawings and embroideries Needle in a Haystack (2024) will be presented in an exhibition at the Judgement Tower of the Maribor Minoriti in July and August as a Collateral Environment of EKO 9.

The Starry Sky, 2020, embroidery on fabric, courtesy of the artist