“I made jam in Barcelona from the strawberries picked by our ‘căpşunari’”[1]

Interview with Matei Bejenaru

The representations of labor and the image of the worker – ignored in post-socialist art – constitute the main research topics chosen by visual artist Matei Bejenaru. In his photographs, installations and performance projects, the artist analyzes the transformations of the contexts of labor in Romania and abroad. Construction sites, factories and strawberry fields are just some of the spaces which define work and power relations within the social art put forward by Matei Bejenaru. In the interview conducted by Mihaela Michailov, Bejenaru emphasizes the work relations between the workers with whom he created his artistic projects, the straightforward discussions he has with the workers involved, the role of social art and the way this art can enable important transformations: “If social art ends up being consumed and put on a pedestal by the art system, it’s not enough. I’m not naïve, I don’t believe art can change the world. But if it manages to stir some discussions on certain delicate issues, then it’s an important step forward.”

For Matei Bejenaru, making art with workers represents a form of social involvement from the part of the artist, who then becomes a participant observer, a subject of the documented work: “I made smokers for pork and used them with the people in the neighborhoods in the 90s, I made over-sized clothes in a Romanian textile mill, considering the profit rate of a Western company operating in Romania at the time, I made jam in Barcelona from the strawberries picked by our ‘căpşunari’, I made a public choreography performance with more than 200 Romanians in London…”.

Interview conducted by Mihaela Michailov

M3: Labor, Memory, Movement. Group of Romanian workers on a construction site in Italy, Nettuno, 2008.