Zvono 2020

Artists: Kemil Bekteši, Mladen Bundalo, Danijela Mihić, Mila Panić

Curator: Irfan Hošić

The exhibition Zvono 2020 presents four artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina—Kemil Bekteši, Mladen Bundalo, Danijela Mihić and Mila Panić—and their works of art created in 2019 and 2020. These are the finalists of the Zvono Award from 2020, chosen by an expert jury within the selection process, which consisted of Daniel Baumann (curator, Switzerland), Igor Bošnjak (artist, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Ana Dević (curator, Croatia), Miroslav Karić (curator, Serbia) and Ana Torok (curator, US). Coincidentally, the exhibition is an outcome of collaboration between Bihać’s KRAK and Sarajevo’s SKLOP—the organization which administered the Award ceremony from 2017 to 2021. The four selected artists provide a direct insight into the results of the evaluation of the received applications by the international jury and serve as an overview of recent artistic practice in Bosnia and Herzegovina by artists up to 40 years of age.

The works at the exhibition present current topics of social reality of the environment, which are in some way related to the everyday life of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are valuable documents and represent a reflection of the individual mood, but also of the collective spirit contrasted to the political situation in the country. The span of covered topics ranges from endangered national monuments according to which the negligence of state institutions has become the rule (Kemil Bekteši), migration issues which reflect the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina in recent years (Mladen Bundalo, Mila Panić), to introverted experiences of personal physicality in times of pandemic anxiety and uncertainty (Danijela Mihić). With a cross-section of the topics covered, the exhibition functions outside the country’s borders as well, i.e. globally, since it deals with universal stories of uncertainty and concern. At the same time, the personal optics represented at the exhibition become channels of reflection of the collectivity and its mood within which the local context overlaps with that from a broader perspective. 

Meanwhile, the exhibition Zvono 2020 is strong yearn for normalization of opportunities in culture and the arts, which have been devastated by the suspension caused by the global pandemic. Despite universal digitization and electronic networking, returning to the gallery space and enabling direct interaction seems to be the key for artists and audiences to act. In this regard, the exhibition will signal normalization and will also serve as an informal farewell to the winner of the Zvono Award for 2020, Mila Panić, on her trip to New York, which was postponed for mentioned reasons. 

Finally, the exhibition denotes the formal act of taking over the Zvono Award by KRAK—as part of the Young Visual Artists Award network from Central and Eastern Europe—a decision made by the Trust for Mutual Understanding and Residency Unlimited from New York in late 2021. Previous winners of the Award are Lala Raščić (2006), Mladen Miljanović (2007), Ervin Babić (2008), Irena Sladoje (2009), Adela Jušić (2010), Sandra Dukić and Boris Glamočanin (2011), Selma Selman (2014), Nina Komel (2016) and Igor Bošnjak (2018).

KRAK Center has launched an open call for submitting proposals for 2022 Zvono Award.