Adela Jušić
Adela Jušić (born 1982 Sarajevo) is a Bosnian contemporary visual artist. She was born in Sarajevo. She is known for her socially engaged art on the subject of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the role of partisan women during the Second World War in Yugoslavia. She has exhibited her works in more than 100 international exhibitions including: Frestas – Trienal de Artes (São Paulo), The Women's Room (New York), Balkan Artist Guild (London), Manifesta 8. (Murcia), ISCP (New York), Videonale (Bonn), Image Counter Image (München). Jušić is a cofounder of the Association for Art and Culture  Crvena. Adela Jušić is one of the creators of the online archive of the antifascist struggle of women in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia. She lives and works in Sarajevo. Education. Jušić attended the High School of Applied Arts from 1997 to 2001. She obtained an MA from the Academy of Fine Arts, the Department of Printmaking, Sarajevo University in 2007. She completed her second MA in Democracy and human rights in South East Europe from Sarajevo and Bologna universities in 2013. She completed her internship as part of ERMA program at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje , Macedonia in 2013. Career. Jušić grew up in Sarajevo during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina which strongly influenced her art works. The main aspects of her work are her personal experience of the war and the politics of war, her strong devotion to feminism, communality and solidarity. She uses different media: video, video performance, performance, collage and drawing.("The sniper", "I will never talk about the war again", "Silk lavander shirt", "Ride the recoil"). Second part of her works portray partisan women's role in the Second World War and the role of women in Socialism ("Unknown Heroines , What has our struggle given us?", "Unknown partisan woman"). Until 2017, she has created more than 50 multimedia and visual art works. Her works have been reviewed by Marina Gržinić, David Elliot, Jelena Petrović, Matthew Webber, Jonathan Blackwood, Alessandra Ferrini and Hodara Susan, among some. Her work is described as "disarmingly honest and candid, be it dealing with family stories or broader political narratives." Auto-biographical works on war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Sniper (2007). Original title "Snajperist", this short video is an auto-biographical work. Adela Jušić's father had been a member of the Bosnian Army in  Sarajevo from the start of the war. His task during Sarajevo siege was to hunt down the snipers who were shooting at civilians in breach of human rights and the Geneva Conventions. It was on December 3, 1992, when, as a sniper, he got killed by a sniper bullet which hit him in the eye. In "The Sniper", the artist narrates the part of her father's notebook where he had listed how many soldiers he had killed during his combat assignments, while drawing a red circle behind which the photograph of her father appears. "The Sniper" was part of  the MOMENTUM exhibition “HERO MOTHER / Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism” curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch and Bojana Pejic in Berlin. Bojana Pejic states that: "Memory is also re-enacted in the pieces that treat the trauma and loss caused by the war in Bosnia (Maja Bajević and Adela Jušić), and these works also specify that the memories of women, even when they are soldiers, differ from those of men." Alessandra Ferini, visual artist, researcher and educator, states: "The Sniper" was used as part of MA Fine Art degree course at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the  Arts London and Tate Research Centre and rose "the issue of how personal material occupies the field of catharsis in making, living and restoring memories." Jušić presented her work "The Sniper at" London School of Economics panel "Art in Conflict" in 2013. "The Sniper" is part of imai – inter media art institute foundation archive and Transitland: Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe. Transitland EUROPA is a collaborative archive of 100 videos that reflect on the transitions and transformations in the post-Socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The videos include works from the past twenty years, from the  fall of the Berlin Wall to the present. When I die, you can do what you want (2011). Original title of the work is "Kad ja umrem, radite šta hoćete", 2011. In this video, the artist tenderly applies dye to the hair of her grandmother, who has since died. On the soundtrack, Jušić whispers in Bosnian, retelling the stories her grandmother shared about her difficult life. “Back then it was hundred times worse,” the subtitles read, and, “Death is a pretty relief.”. Jušić's grandmother had lived through both the Second World War and the previous war in Bosnia and  Herzegovina. Hana Marku describes the work: "When I die, you can do what you want" is also part of imai – inter media art institute foundation archive of 3,000 artistic and documentary works from the pioneering era of the 1960s until the present day. I will never talk about the war again (2011). Original title of the work is: "Ja više nikada neću pričati o ratu." In this collaborative video performance "I Will Never Talk About the War Again" of Adela Jušić and Lana Cmajcanin, the two artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina promise each other not to talk about the war  anymore, repeating the same sentence over and over, increasingly becoming more and more agitated that they cannot escape the subject even by not talking. Matthew Webber reviews the work: The work "I will never talk about the war" was included in the Perpetuum Mobile collection of Living Archive, during its first edition in Zagreb, Croatia in 2011, as "integral part, an attempt and challenge to politically (re)articulate these overlapping, conflicting and rebounding grounds". Jelena Petrovic, member of curatorial team, states that "the work itself becomes a trigger for the curators’ positioning in relation to the work, as well as  a signifier of the context in which it is presented to the audience, media and the politics of place." This work, along with "The Sniper" and "When I die, you can do what you want" have been included in Film Mutations: Festival of Invisible Cinema 08 Parallel Film, Zagreb 2014. Selector of the Festival, theoretician and artist Marina Gržinić, describes the works showing the "intensified, militarized colonialism and the machine of war (which regulates gaze, affects and life)" and further that: I will never talk about the war again exhibitions. "I will never talk about the war again" was used  as a title for an exhibition in Färgfabriken's global project, Psychosis in Stockholm in 2011, curated by Vladan Jeremic, on post-war trauma and the social psychological consequences. It presents the works of artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and Russia such as Adela Jušić, Marina Abramović, Igor Grubić, Živko Grozdanić Gera, Lana Cmajcanin and several others. "I will never talk about the war again" work and "Bedtime stories", also a collaboration between Adela Jušić and Lana Cmajcanin are both included in the exhibition"." The modified exhibition of the original one presented in Stockholm "I will never talk  about the war again" was also presented in Maribor, Slovenia as a part of the programme created by KIBLA for the manifestation Maribor 2012: European Capital of Culture. It is focused on critical social analysis and testimonies of violence and trauma connected with recent wars in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Ride the recoil (2013). Adela Jušić's mixed media work in collaboration with Ervin Prašljivić "Ride the Recoil" was developed with technical support by Ervin Prašljivić and Ognjen Šavija. "Ride the Recoil" is a critique of the video game "Sniper : Ghost Warrior 2" (set in Sarajevo) "as" the  commodification of the Bosnian war. The work consists of the video-game excerpts, audio narrative part of the artist on how to avoid snipers (based on her wartime experiences) overdubbing the instructions of the video game on how to kill and series of photographs of a little girl leaving the gate. "Ride the recoil" has won the Special award of 54th October salon. "Ride the Recoil" was first published as part of Triple Canopy’s Internet as Material project area, supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston, the Lambent Foundation Fund  of Tides Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Jonathan Blackwood, theoretician, writer and curator of contemporary art, describes the piece: Silk lavander shirt (2016). As a main element of the performance, the artist uses ICTY trial transcripts, the memoirs of Biljana Plavšić, her statements to the media, and other relevant materials. Biljana Plavšić, the former President of the Republic of Srpska, was indicted in 2001 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for genocide , crimes against humanity and war crimes during Bosnian war. After pleading guilty and statement of repentance, the prosecutors dropped genocide charges against her, and sentenced her to 11 years. She served two thirds of her sentence in prison in Sweden and was released earlier. During her stay in prison in 2005, she published a voluminous memoirs in which she denied her previous confession. The idea of the performance was to point out to the contrast present in representation of Biljana Plavsic, her false repentance and light sentence she had received, disproportionate to the crimes she had committed. The title of  the work was inspired by the quote about Biljana Plavšić of a prominent writer Slavenka Drakulić: "Pale green, lavender, fuchsia, and dark blue seem to be her favorite colors; a silk shirt under her jacket part of her uniform." Works on partisan women and Second World War. Adela Jušić has dedicated years to the research of participation of women in National Peoples Struggle, Women's Antifascist Front and their position in the aftermath of the Second World War. First central segment of her work is related to the portrayals of women partisans, their representation in NOB, women's narratives and  their oral history. Such works include "What has our struggle given us?" (2013), which is a mixed media work inspired by the book Women heroes on life stories of 10 Bosnian heroines from World War II. Another example of Jušić's work is "Unknown Partisan woman" (2016). After the World War II in Yugoslavia, Partisans whose names were not known were buried under the gravestone that instead of a name had words Unknown Partisan or Unknown Partisan woman engraved. Jušić created a replica of such gravestone with words: "Unknown Partisan woman" and put it in the park in the center  of Sarajevo, near other historically important sites and across the building where notorious Beledija jail was, where many woman antifascists were held prisoners and tortured during the war. After almost a year, no city authorities or media gave attention to the gravestone. It is still on the same spot. The second central topic of her work is the relationship of the economy and the reproductive role of women during Socialism. Jušić compares the participation of women in Second World War through their mass mobilization and armed struggle, post-war participation of women in re-building of the state through their  voluntary work and the big turnover of perception of women's work during 1950's when women are called into their natural roles as mother, housewives and nurturers. Some of the most notable works on this topic include: "Labor of Love" in collaboration with Andreja Dugandzic (2014), "Here come the Women" (2015), "We long for work and toil" in collaboration with Andreja Dugandzic (2014) and many more. As Jonathan Blackwood describes: Archive of Anti-fascist Front of Women of BiH and Yugoslavia. Adela Jušić and Andeja Dugandžić have started an online archive of Women's Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia and  Women's Antifascist Front of BiH in 2015. This online platform consists of thousands of documents, photographs, interviews, transcripts, periodicals and books Adela Jušić and Andreja Dugandzic have been collecting for years in public archives, libraries and private collections. The archive was launched on 8 March, the International Women's day in 2015. The archive was launched as to: As part of the archive a book as a collection of essays, works and illustrations called "Izgubljena revolucija:" "AFŽ Između mita i zaborava" was published and presented. The collection features a chapter on Jušić's illustrations.