Like the Moon and the Sun

Halil Tikveša’s “Something like the Sun” and “Something like the Moon”, a black and a white circle painted on wood, appear to be quite the opposites. And yet the luminous star and the lunar planet are closely related, complementing each other, just like the diverse artworks that have come together for the Sarajevo Salon. The encounter of this artistic plurality stems from the format of the exhibition, in which, once a year, artists of different generations contribute to a show with a variety of media, themes and forms of expression. They provide an overview of current artistic creation in Bosnia.

What does it mean to be an artist from Bosnia, Bojan Stojčić’s video work seems to ask. In an attempt to film the opening of the Bosnian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024, Stojčić confronts the exclusionary way the event is celebrated by those representing Bosnia at the prestigious biennial. In the video the artist becomes a rude foreigner who disturbs the status quo. Underlaying the situations with dramatic music fragments from Benjamin Britten’s opera “Death in Venice”, Stojčić humorously questions the systems in which a small circle of people select art suitable to represent the nation – yet what is a nation anyway, let alone a nation in a country with different “entities”? The idea of the nation is quite new compared to human history – around 200 years as opposed to 300,000 years, a rather short sigh in the lifespan of humankind. Nevertheless, we consider it as a natural given. In line with the building of nations as homogenous entities meant to represent one culture, language and identity, the edges of territories changed from loose ends to straight borders. In times of harsh border restrictions with tightly fenced and high-tech secured crossings, we easily forget that the concept of borders too is quite new. Danilo Kreso’s work is based on the idea that static territories grant security to those included if their borders are drawn with sharp lines and right angles, regardless of the topography on which the lines are drawn – Damir Šabić offers a different view of topographies in the exhibition. Kreso’s photo series, like Stojčić’s video, however, undermines stasis by offering a movement that art can set in motion.

In contrast to monuments that glorify the nation’s achievements, Kemil Bekteši’s monument to a bakery worker proposes a dedication to “ordinary” people. After all, they are the ones who make up the fabric of a society. While the artist devotes the monument to his father, all bakery workers are included in socialist traditions as a symbol of the working class. Through humble monumentalization, Bekteši highlights the multiple shapes of bread, its textures and ornaments, and ultimately the artistry of making bread. During the siege of Sarajevo, people had to stand in long queues to get a piece of bread or a small amount of water. Emir Kapetanović depicts such a seemingly trivial scene, which was in fact an act of resistance against the choking off of the supply of basic needs to the population. The queue in Kapetanović’s painting seems as endless as the war, an uncertainty Palestinians have been facing the last 15 months. In this light, the abstract work “Srebrenica” by Dževdet Nikočević takes on new meaning in expressing the horrors of genocide. In the contrast between tones, haptics, and the intensities of glistening yellow brightness and shadowy darkness, the invisible becomes something felt, evoking in the viewer their own associations with the painting. Mensud Kečo similarly chooses a reduced form to express the reflections of war. The figure embodies agony, the struggle to sustain life against the forces of destruction, in other works often portrayed through burnt charcoal trees. With reference to the First Chechen War (1994-96), Andrej Đerković uses Stanley Greene’s image of a person clinging to a chair, the only thing the war has left him, in hope of finding shelter.

Đerković contrasts Greene’s photo with the image of Jusuf Hadžifejzović, similarly holding a chair on his head in a performance. In the Sarajevo Salon, we find one of Hadžifejzović’s actual works, his “Shop of Emptiness”, in which packages of everyday consumer products enter the gallery space to be sold by the artist. Likewise, Armela Vesković incorporates the presence and interaction of visitors in her installation, that shares aspects of Adis Lukač’s sculpture or Kemal Hadžić’s broken self-portrait which potentially mirrors us. Adna Muslija offers a participatory work in the manner of Rirkrit Tiravanija, who invites visitors to share meals as a way of connecting people in his practice. Muslija’s work is a tribute to the artist Saša Bukvić, who, like Hadžifejzović, encouraged people to engage in art.

The blurring of boundaries between art and everyday life that Bukvić promoted also applies to Hadžifejzović’s “Shop of Emptiness”. When we see the abundance of packages in his years-long work with today’s eyes, a new dimension might occur: What happens to all the plastic and foiled cardboard when they don’t end up as artworks? Boris Hodak’s digital collage might provide an answer (although less gender-based stereotyping might have worked just as well), or in a more abstract way perhaps even Benjamin Handukić’s paintings of the earth craters. More concretely, Renata Papišta points to climate change, another major issue caused by capitalism. By drawing images of icebergs on photos of the sea, she highlights what has already disappeared – not illuminating the natural ephemerality of ice, but the traces that symbolize extreme weather changes worldwide. Damir Nikšić’s paintings obfuscate rather than show such processes. By depicting landscapes that could make it onto Instagram in an impressionist way, he seems to transport us to another time, a time when these processes were initiated by industrialization.

The works at this year’s Sarajevo Salon may not follow one theme that unites them, and yet we find commonalities, overlaps and connections. Some enter into a dialogue in a more subtle way, others more directly. Amela Hadžimejlić’s ghostly scenes resonate with the haunting figures of Izet Alečković. The eyes in Branko Bačanović’s graphic metamorphosis communicate with the faceless figures of Emir Osmić, Mladen Štrbac’s scriptures or the birds of Irfan Handukić in his collage-like prints. Andrej Đerković’s image comparison speaks to Alija Kamber’s homage to Jusuf Hadžifejzović or Rafet Jonuzi’s tribute to Alma Suljević. Marko Frančešević’s hybrid fantasy beings contrast with Lejla Čehajić’s poetic sculpture, Adis Elias Fejzić’s torso or Halim Ahmedspahić’s mineral sculptures. Samir Plasto’s spiritualistic depictions mirror Halil Tikveša’s luminous celestial bodies. Like the moon and the sun, some artworks may seem far apart at first glance, and yet they are linked. They illuminate and reflect each other, revealing how they relate to our here and now.