An interactive theatre performance transforming xenophobic stereotypes into symbols of resilience and reinvention.
Maja Simišić
Location: The Other Mezrab
duration: 40 min
- GENRE: Cabaret, Comedy, Performance Art
- THEME: Changing the Norm, More than human, The female voice
- LANGUAGE: English
- ACCESSIBILITY: Assistance dogs welcome, Genderneutral toilets, Specific accessibility description, check 'locations and accessibility' for more info, Toilet for wheelchair users, Wheelchair accessible
info
Blending satire, cabaret, and multimedia installation, A Beautiful Cockroach explores what it means to survive inside systems designed to classify and assimilate.
Inspired by diasporic experiences and migration politics, the performance follows Vanessa van Cock through a grotesque yet seductive theatrical universe filled with irony, glamour, and discomfort. Audiences are invited into an interactive spectacle where humour becomes a strategy for endurance.
Biography
Maja Simišić (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist born in Germany, based in the Netherlands, and holding Serbian citizenship. A graduate with honors from the Willem de Kooning Academy, Maja navigates identity, bureaucracy, diasporic longing, and feminist resistance through performance, installation, and video. Her recent projects include solo exhibitions at Trixie Gallery (The Hague) and Vagon Gallery (Banja Luka), and performances like Visa Reveal Party and Wifey4Lifey. She has been a resident artist at Roodkapje(NL) and Klub Solitaer (DE), and received multiple grants including from the Mondriaan Fonds. Driven by humour her practice often unfolds in protest-like gestures, playful rituals, and interactive experiments that blur personal narrative and political critique.