Zvono 2022

Artists: Irma Bajramović, Alma Gačanin, Nikola Kekerović, Saša Tatić
Curator: Irfan Hošić

The Zvono 2022 exhibition—which includes the participation of artists Irma Bajramović, Alma Gačanin, Nikola Kekerović and Saša Tatić—is a review of current Bosnian art by artists up to the age of 35, and as a whole offers a concise insight into the current social issues of the space and time in which it is created. Although the work of the aforementioned artists is thematically based on personal experiences related to migration, trauma from war, physical isolation, or issues of imposed social norms and the general culture of living, what they have in common is internal pressure and the need to articulate a personal voice. The interpretation of their work is determined by the impression of a lack of space for free expression. In such a social environment, there is a need to initiate diverse discussions as means of emancipation in an environment that suffers from backwardness, irritability and moral devaluation.

What these authors have in common, as sort of thread that permeates this work, is the accumulated pressure created as a result of social stunting—the need for a scream, i.e., a cry that erupts as a result of accumulated frustrations and collective dissatisfaction.

Alma Gačanin, who is the winner of the Zvono Award in 2022, connects her work with memories from her childhood, which are painfully marked by growing up in a besieged city. Poetic and sentimental, her work The Yellow Raincoat is on the verge of explosion. Dissatisfaction related to a wasted childhood and lost time emerges from it. Iterations of that work formalized in different media—performance in public space, clothing creation, drawing and video—suggest the frustration of an adult in a devastated post-war society. “Her artistic practice is based on her personal experience of living in a dysfunctional, post-war, post-transitional society, marked by the rules of a late-capitalist, unstable and globalized world.” (Haslund, Kamerić, Weise, 2022).

Artist Irma Bajramović is concerned with the same themes and context. By tracing personal migration experience and displacement, Bajramović questions the understanding of the notions of belonging between homeland and diaspora. Stretched between two poles of different continents and cultures, the artist creates her fictitious space and finds a way out of the constructed identity crisis. Saša Tatić operates in the same way, focusing on subjective reflections that are linked to issues of social norms and expectations from the immediate community. The artist ironically weaves questions of age, social status, and other personal details through personal criticism, creating autobiographical or auto-fictional sketches.

On the other hand, Nikola Kekerović plunges into personal anxiety and emotions that are typical for the physical isolation caused by the global pandemic during 2020 and 2021. Using painting as the basic medium of recording his conditions in the series Feasibility Studies, Kekerović explores how the concepts of “economy” on the one hand, and “death” on the other hand collide. These are terms that were mostly used in the media space of the developed West during the ethical and moral analysis of physical isolation and what was remembered as “lockdown.”

The gathering of artists at the Zvono 2022 exhibition is the result of a decision made by expert judges as part of the same-name award, which has been taking place in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2006 within the international network of the Young Visual Artists Award from Central and Eastern Europe, whose organization is supported by the Trust for Mutual Understanding and Residency Unlimited from New York. The jury, which met at KRAK in May 2022, consisted of artists Molly Haslund (Copenhagen), Šejla Kamerić (Sarajevo) and Ina Weise (Dresden). 

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), Igor Bošnjak (2018) and Mila Panić (2020).

Video about last year’s exhibition Zvono 2020 is available here.