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"ARTISTS RESPOND" PROJECT: SMILJA JANKOVIĆ & ADELA JUŠIĆ (Bosnia and Hercegovina)
03. July 2020

Adela Jušić (b. 1982, Sarajevo) characterises her work as extremely personal, infused with own experiences, memories and the politics that come from the feminist discourse and materialise in different media. Her primary media is video. Her art is rooted in personal experiences (including the topic of the war in Bosnia, the position of women in wartime, cultural tradition, etc.). She is one of the members and founders of the CRVENA Association for culture and art.

Smilja Janković (b., Sarajevo) studied, lived and worked in Poland, Turkey, South Korea, Israel, the USA, Costa Rica and New Zealand, and eventually returned to BiH, where she plans to stay. She is currently a PhD student in Peace Studies at Otago University in New Zealand, and in Banja Luka she teaches children and adults and works as a researcher for the Museum of War Childhood.

Smilja and Adela send us for the project a “Work in progress”: “Closer to the black hole, spacetime starts to deform. There are more paths going towards the black hole than paths moving away. Inside of the event horizon, all paths bring the particle closer to the centre of the black hole. It is no longer possible for the particle to escape. 

Work is initiated by the sudden appearance of a hole in the ground of the central Sarajevo park and media representation of it. An outrageous amount of 35 000 Euros was spent to close this black hole, an example of a corrupted state system of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where most people are living on the edge of poverty, but also of global corruption. The art action used granted money to pay black market workers who got into even worse economic situations, because of COVID pandemic.

The action was done the last day before the police curfew was legally imposed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and continues through the pandemic period in creating the narrative for video through research, gathering information and interviews, talks with black market workers and other precarious workers or those who lost their jobs due to Pandemic and stated general ignorance, corruption and exploitative economic system.”

Sarajevo, 27/06/2020


Artists Respond project was started by the Institute for the Research of the Avant-Garde and the Marinko Sudac Collection. Addressing the current global pandemic, the project aims to virtually present the thoughts and attitudes of neo-avant-garde artists, their energy and the message they have for the present moment. This is the moment in which the world as we know it is on hold and the moment in which we need optimism and solidarity more than ever. We wish for the public to welcome the creative energy of these artists - artists who are ready to point out the state of things, to respond with art and creativity, as they have done in all difficult times in the past.


Adela Jušić was a participant of our Artist on Vacation project in 2018, organised by the Institute for the Research of the Avant-Garde and the Marinko Sudac Collection, with Valamar Riviera d.d. in whose facilities they reside in Poreč.

See more: Artist on Vacation

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