Sema Bekirovic makes photos, videos and installations whose key elements are coincidence and the friction between nature and culture.
An important theme in her work is the tension between obtaining and the letting go of control. She creates a situation for something to occur and lets coincidence decide how the work develops. Another often seen theme is "nature vs culture", wherein nature can be seen as the uncontrollable factor in our existence which we try to control by means of culture.
Sema's videos and installations evolved from her fascination with the medium photography. Not only is she interested in the nucleus of an image, but also in the effect the image can have. A photo can change the meaning of things without altering the things themselves. An example of this can be seen in the photos she took of billboards depicting planned buildings in a rather desolate scenery, contrasting what is with wat might be.
In the video "Birds of prey" she creates the potential for unexpected things to happen by letting loose a number of birds of prey in an office building. By just being themselves the birds silently comment their surroundings.
Another "bird work" and Sema's most well known work is the book Koet. Here she goes a bit farther with her interventions, making her own presence an integral part of the work. Koet is a photo-essay on a pair of coots building their nest. Bekirovic "feeds" them a load of personal items (from nude pictures to toothbrushes) which they incorporate into their nest, thereby commenting on the different meanings object can have.
A different take on the subject of coincidence is the video "How to stop falling". Here it's not about the result of the fall (as in the work of artists such as Duchamp or Pollock). Instead Bekirovic' letters keep on falling. She doesnn't put a stop to coincidence, but records it in its distinctive feature of movement. "How to stop falling" is a registration of a process on which the maker hardly had any influence, showing only the nature of a falling object. (Marcus Bruystens)