Barbara Le Béguec Friedman
PERFOMRANCE
"The aim of my work is to disrupt the comfort of the known and the recognised.
I create spaces, moments and actions that allow the viewer or participant to blur the boundaries of what is defined."
Photo @Beate Linne
The woman who loved birds and trees performance, Aug. 2025, No (W) Here Festival #4, Forum Kreishaus Goslar, Germany.
Black tape,
envelopes,
scissors,
a black fabric bag
full of seeds,
a pair of shoes.
Suspended Exhibition-performance. January 21-27, 2025. Dzyga Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine. The project is a collaboration with Yaryna Shumska (Ukraine)
Suspended Exhibition-performance. January 21-27, 2025. Dzyga Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine. The project is a collaboration with Yaryna Shumska (Ukraine)
Suspended Exhibition-performance. January 21-27, 2025. Dzyga Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine. The project is a collaboration with Yaryna Shumska (Ukraine)
Photo @Beate Linne
Performances from the project Suspended in collaboration with Yaryna Shumska, Jan. 2025. Dzyga Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine.
"The collaborative project began in November 2023. It explores the sense of temporality and uncertainty, the state of pause. Through the “exhibition in action” format, the authors focus on how time, the rhythm of everyday life, and memories affect our perception of reality."
Performances
Day 1. And the price of the sky?
Day 2. How many more?
Day 3. Can you hear me?
Day 4. Tell me a story
Day 5. Time machine
Day 6. Performance at the “opening”.
Day 7. Exhibition.
More photos and information here
Photo @Pascale Ciapp
Excuse me, my head is elsewhere performance, Oct. 2024, FNAF Festival of Naked Forms #10, Espace o25rjj Loupian, France.
I'm holding a spotlight lens
between the flaps of my dress,
which is open at chest level.
Through this lens,
if you get close enough,
you can watch a video looped
on a small screen in my bra.
The sky and pigeons on a wire.
An alarm sounds constantly,
more or less loudly.
A text appears and disappears:
“Excuse me, my head is elsewhere”.
Photo @Madeleine Franke
The long speech and the missing leg performance, July 2024, Festival NO W HERE,Goslar, Germany.
I spoke of two things...
The story of a pacifist father.
And the fact that, during my last stay in Ukraine, I was struck by the growing presence of people who are missing one or more limbs.
White fabric, green plant and tape.
Cleaning the ground performance, May 2024, Pančevo Art Biennale, Serbia.
Some of the words I have said during the performance :
“It happens very often that I remember my parents asking before dinner if I cleaned my hands”... They were asking me this question several times each day. Today it’s still stuck in my mind. “Are my hands clean?”...
I think it was something like two years ago now, the train station in Kramatorsk was bombed. (...) One picture is still stuck in my mind. I think there were something like fifty people killed. A lot of children. (...) One of the pictures was a teddy bear, a unicorn... full of colors. This one was full of blood. I am pretty sure the kid who was holding this teddy bear is not alive anymore. (...) There are a lot of things we don’t know how to clean.
I don’t even know if we can clean the wounds.
Oh! And if someone wants to take part in this situation, there are other brooms inside, you can ask people who know where they are. Just in case. Because it’s going to be long to do that. And sometimes it’s better when you don’t do things alone.
Two months ago I saw a video, still I was in France. It was a video of an orange cat. I really like that, I think everybody likes cat videos, sometimes it makes us smile. This cat was sitting on a man actually, he was cleaning himself, really peaceful. And orange cats are really strange, funny.
But then, I realized that the man was dead. So it was a dead body. It was on the ground of Gaza. Palestine. (...) Still I hear my parents asking me if my hands are clean.
(...)Also, a few days after seeing this orange cat, I saw a video of a little girl. Still in Gaza. She was holding her cat. She was maybe five or six years old. She was telling the cat... Or maybe more begging her cat. “Please, do not eat me when I will be dead from the bombs!” (...) I don’t know if she is still alive... There are a lot of chances that she is not.
Words written on the paper are “діти”and “أطفال” : “children” in Ukranian and in Arabic languages.
Photo @Petar Živković
Photo @Pascale Ciapp
Our body memory
performance, 2023, FNAF Altenburg 1964, Prague, Czech Republic.
A table, a blue chair, a yellow chair, a mortar, a glass jar, a useless lipstick, ashes, a scarf, a long dress and my baby teeth.
Some of the words I have said during the performance :
A scientific study into the potential genetic evolution of certain elephant groups seems to establish a causal link between poaching and the fact that elephant calves are born without tusks.
In April 2022, several weeks after russia's large-scale attack on Ukraine, I travelled to Poland to be closer to my Ukrainian friends. During this period, I translated many testimonies and information concerning the rapes committed by the russian army in the occupied territories. Many testimonies mentioned that the victims also had their teeth pulled out or broken.
In this performance, I used words, I said, and I put these two facts in parallel,
while grinding my own baby teeth, being completely naked.
The Laundry
performance, 26th of August 2023,
Sudeten FNAF performance art residency,
PERLA, Kyjov, Krásná Lípa, Czech Republic.
A wheelbarrow,
a bucket full of clear water,
a bucket full of soapy water,
six of my clothes
and my dark blue dress.
Social carcans, clothes
and family souvenirs…
Photo @Yaryna Shumska
Photo @Beate Linne
Photo @Beate Linne
The Way We Walk performance, 5th of June 2021, X Performance Art Festival in Tychy, Poland.
Two chairs,
a kitchen timer,
a chess set,
my father's shoes
and a few litres of ashes.
Photo @Beate Linne
Ground performance, 11th of Nov 2020, Lviv, Ukraine,
Ukrainian people's shoes...
The video of the performance was part of the First International Triennial of Performance DEFORMES (Chile) in response to the given theme "The Virtuality of the Body: appear and disappear in times of War"