Saša Bezjak is a visual artist who works in the parallel fields of painting, sculpture and performance, but is best known for her drawings – embroideries on various, mainly home textiles.

Drawing is the foundation of Saša Bezjak’s work, it is the offshoot for all her works, created spontaneously, on a daily basis and in large quantities. The artist uses drawing to convey many things: to express her feelings, ideas and concepts, to record everyday situations and special events, to describe social and intimate relationships, and on a personal level, drawing is a way for her to release inner tensions and conflicts. When she draws, she surrenders herself completely to the process, which is why the drawings are always imbued with the immediacy, spontaneity and originality that she appreciates in children, disabled persons and indigenous peoples.

This approach to creating is also reflected in the form. The drawings are simple and simplified, stripped of all superfluous detail and effective only through the suggestiveness of line. The figure predominates as the central motif, which can appear alone or in combination with others, sometimes also with animals (fish, dog) and various details from nature (sun, stars, rain, trees). Its physiognomy is emphatically expressive and deformed, the limbs are incongruous in relation to each other and/or to the whole, they are too big, too small, too long, too short. Often, they are missing, most frequently the arms, or they appear all alone, without a body (phallus, vulva, head, eye). The figures are placed in impossible positions – as if they were made of rubber that can be kneaded and moulded at will; their bodies are sometimes overstretched, elsewhere compressed and oppressed. The same incoherence characterises the relationships between the figures themselves, between the figure and the other elements in the drawings, and between the figure and the space corresponding to the support, i.e. the paper or fabric.

By playing with these incongruities, the drawings speak of incompatibilities in mutual relations, in the relationship between man and authoritarian systems such as the state and religion, or between woman and society. The latter is particularly emphasised in the drawings embroidered on textiles, which is no coincidence, as embroidery is traditionally associated with female agency. The drawings of Saša Bezjak can therefore be understood as socially critical works that speak about inequalities and, in this context, especially about the position of women in a patriarchal society, while at the same time addressing these issues in a very personal way, through the traces they leave in the individual’s psychological and physical make-up. So they work in multiple ways – they touch everyone directly on an instinctive level, but they also encourage reflection and a search for deeper meanings.

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Saša Bezjak (1971) graduated in Fine Art Education from the Faculty of Education in Maribor and in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where she also completed her master’s degree in Sculpture. She has shown her works in many solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad. Her works are represented in several art collections, including the collections of the Maribor Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška and the Murska Sobota Gallery. She lives and works as a self-employed cultural worker in Gornja Radgona.
https://sasabezjak.si/