A Beautiful Cockroach

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.

About the makers

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.

credits

Artist: Maja Simišić

Producer: Paula Chang

Dramaturgist: Teresa Awa

Technician: Marysia Swietlicka

Photographer: Eden Calgie

Videographer: Benjamin Esquivel

Performer: Skylar Kusana

Performance Assistant: Enrica Arbia

Performance Assistant: Leyla Sünnenwold

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