Šejla Kamerić Grapples With Our Perpetual Conflict

In 2000, as part of Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana, Šejla Kamerić created the site-specific installation EU / Others (2000), in which she positioned two double-sided signs, resembling checkpoints, above the heads of pedestrians on parallel bridges in the city centre. The signs, which read ‘EU Citizens’ and ‘Others’, effectively ‘categorized’ the unwitting participants in one of the two groups as they crossed the bridges.

Almost a quarter of a century later, a version of EU / Others is again on view in Ljubljana, this time as part of the Bosnian artist’s survey show ‘Perfect Tense’ at Cukrarna. Presented as a single lightbox and hung from the ceiling, this reinterpretation of the piece, made in 2021, slowly spins 360 degrees in a dim corridor, as if to suggest that, all these years later, we are still trapped in a cycle of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. It’s a theme that is evident throughout the show, which brings together 12 works, created over more than two decades, which reflect on the personal and historical trauma caused by military conflicts, such as the Balkan Wars (1912–13) and the Siege of Sarajevo (1992–96), in which Kamerić’s father and uncle were killed.

In Sunset (2008), Kamerić has turned what is believed to be the only colour photograph taken during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 into a looping, slow-motion video animation. The life-size installation Ab uno disce omnes (From One to All, 2015), on the other hand, is an unsparing, multivocal archive in the form of a walk-in morgue fridge. It serves as a space for an intimate video projection of arbitrarily shuffled photographs, film footage, personal testimonies, forensic reports and press coverage that testifies to the complex process of recovering and identifying the victims of war and ethnic cleansing in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Alongside these brutal images of human atrocity are a number of more recent works that reflect on the role of everyday language – particularly in the form of slogans and signs – in trying to make sense of what is happening around us. For instance, Refugees Welcome (2020) – a red neon sign pulsating the phrase ‘Refugees Willcome’ – is a play on the German word Willkommen. Kamerić, who is based between Berlin and Sarajevo, here references not only the slogan used by counter-protestors during the many right-wing, anti-immigration demonstrations of 2016 in Germany, but also the historical continuity of people fleeing their homes due to conflict. Nearby, the LED light work Present (2024) flickers ‘SOS’ in Morse code, generating an atmosphere of hazard and urgency, while the large-scale, site-specific installation RE PRESENT END (2024) – positioned on the floor, wall and ceiling of ground-floor space – spells out the words ‘RE PRESENT, PERFECT, PAST END’ in mirrored letters that tauntingly reflect the viewer standing within bold architecture of the institution.   

‘Trauma, by definition, cannot be represented,’ wrote Griselda Pollock in the introduction to her 2013 book After-Affects / After-Images: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation in the Virtual Feminist Museum. ‘But it can be approached, moved and transformed.’ In her multimedia practice, Kamerić takes this to heart, tackling issues of intimate and collective suffering from different angles, often in an accessible manner, while reflecting on her own feelings of distress and confusion at the state of the world. The mirrored, looped, pulsating and spinning works displayed seem to represent the ongoing state of perpetual conflict and testify to the artist’s ‘circular’ way of working, in which she reinterprets and revisits topics and memories in the hope of healing the past.

Šejla Kamerić’s ‘Present Tense’ is on view at Cukrarna, Ljubljana, until 13 October

^{Main image: Šejla Kamerić, RE PRESENT END (detail), 2024, site-specific installation, plexiglass, dimensions variable. Courtesy: the artist; photograph: Blaž Gutman/MGML}