Rakocevic Cvijanov Maja

My artistic practice relies on a personal approach, emerging from the sphere of the intimate and private, and bringing everyday life routines and roles imposed by tradition into the realm of dilemma. Using the language of naivety, kitsch, and junk as an artistic strategy, I challenge choices in relation to established stereotypes and social patterns.
Within the artistic process, I focus on what is important on my path of authenticity. Analysing personal experiences, I dissect social constructs. Aspiring to revealing one’strue needs, I encourage the possibility of personal choice - as the path to authenticity in a society overwhelmed with stereotype and prejudice.
My art imitates everyday life. Following that concept, I search for the most accurate expression and form for materialisation. Therefore, sculpture appears to me as an expanded field, from traditional form to complete abandonment of form, leaving only the area created for the event.
In addition to beinga mother, a wife, a professionalanda housewife, I have a great need to fulfil myself through my work in art. Struggling with social and gender roles, as well as daily responsibilities, I borrow the time. Thus, life situations become material for creation, and the time that i...

She completed the Higher School of Fine and Applied Arts in Belgrade in 1996. She graduated in sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 2001. She earned her master's degree at the same faculty in 2004. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2023 at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, also in the sculpture department.
Since 2008, she has been employed as a sculpture conservator advisor at the Inter-Municipal Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Subotica. She has been teaching sculpture at the Polytechnic School in Subotica since 2018. In 2022, she completed the course on Alternative Women's Studies and has been teaching in their educational programs since then.

From 2000, she has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, festivals, biennials and fairs in Serbia and abroad (Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Germany, USA, France).
She has held solo exhibitions since the early 2000s in galleries and museums of contemporary art in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Hungary.