Matei Bejenaru
Nominated the artist(s):
Dan Acostioaei
Artist
www.periferic.org
Romania
Matei Bejenaru is an artist and initiator of Periferic Biennial in Iasi, Romania. Established in 1997 as a performance festival, Periferic transformed into an international contemporary art biennial defined as a platform for discussions on the historical, socio-political and cultural context of Iasi.
Together with a group of artists and philosophers from Iasi, Matei Bejenaru founded in 2001 the Vector Association, a contemporary art institution which supported the local emerging art scene to become locally and internationally visible. He is also member of the editorial stuff of Vector – art and culture in context magazine, a publication that mainly analyses the regional artistic and cultural situation of the South East European countries, in the process of transition, and the Middle East region, subdued to the pressures of conflicts.
As an artist, he is socially engaged in analyzing the way globalization affects postcommunist countries labor force and rapidly changes mentalities and lifestyles. In 2003, for the second edition of Tirana Biennial he installed a water post in the center of the city offering a free water distribution for Albanian inhabitants. In 2004, he initiated the cARTier project, a socio-cultural project aiming to regenerate a workers district from Iasi. In 2005, he published in the Idea Magazine and later exhibited at Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Art in Vienna, a Travelling Guide for Romanian illegal workers.
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