STRAKATI
2022
Installation and film
Commissioned by: National gallery, Prague, and Centre Pompidou, Paris

Caravan: Metal powder coated, pictures, tv screen, lights (produced by Demowork)
Portrait's Pictures by Iryna Drahun

<Béna’s new film made specifically for this exhibition casts doubt on the stereotypical position of the artist as someone who puts their practice before their family, a situation made all the more complicated if the person in the role of artist is a woman.
The film may be viewed as a complex and authentic coming to terms with social judgement, as well as self-reproaches regarding the work-family conflict.
Chosen with deliberation, the genre of horror and nightmare gives the artist room to play with, and symbolically exaggerate, the roles of mother, wife and daughter. Employing hyperbole, their relationships are inverted when she uses and abuses her family for her art.
 
The main protagonist is a maliciously capricious jester come prankster. Both seductive and dictatorial, the character uses and exploits the behavioural mechanisms and attitudes associated with dark humour. Verging towards a tragic clown show, the film employs physical gestures instead of words to lay bare the artist’s antithetic emotions. Emphatically overacted, it oscillates
between laughter and tragedy.
Somewhere between mimes and clowns, the figures wear striking make-up on their faces and the tension in their bodies gives the impression of tragic pantomime. The film’s main roles are played by the artist and her real family. Involving her family and abusing them as performers in a film leads the artist towards catharsis, cleansing
and reinforcement.
The film is set in a sculptural object resembling a circus caravan, evoking memories of the artist’s childhood in a travelling theatre.>