279: Dana Turkovic: Curator of Laumeier Sculpture Park and Aida Sehovic: Independent Artist
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Dana Turkovic, Curator of Laumeier Sculpture Park, and Aida \\u0160ehovi\\u0107, Independent Artist stopped by to talk about Aida\'s exhibition \\u0160TO TE NEMA, which \\xa0runs through December 19, 2021.
Aida \\u0160ehovi\\u0107 is an artist and founder of the \\u0160TO TE NEMA nomadic monument. The project began as a one-time performance with a presentation of the first 923 collected porcelain cups (fild\\u017eani) in 2006. Since then, \\u0160TO TE NEMA has evolved into a participatory community art project organized in close collaboration with Bosnian diaspora communities in a different city each year. For the past 13 years, \\u0160TO TE NEMA has traveled throughout Europe and the United States, and currently consists of more than 7,500 donated cups (fild\\u017eani). This year \\u0160ehovi\\u0107 worked with Bosnian diaspora communities in Switzerland to bring \\u0160TO TE NEMA to Helvetia Platz in Z\\xfcrich on July 11, 2018.
Aida \\u0160ehovi\\u0107 was born in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and like thousands of fellow Bosnian Muslims, fled her country due to threat of systematic violence and persecution in 1992. She lived as a refugee in Turkey and Germany before immigrating to United States in 1997. \\u0160ehovi\\u0107 earned her BA from the University of Vermont in 2002 and her MFA from Hunter College in 2010. She received the ArtsLink Award in 2006, the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship in 2007, the Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park in 2013, and the Fellowship for Utopian Practice from Culture Push in 2017. She was an artist-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Vermont Studio Center, the Grand Central Art Center, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has been exhibited extensively including at Flux Factory, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Queens Museum in New York City, where the artist is based.\\xa0
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About \\u0160TO TE NEMA:
When Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, ethno-national divisions plunged the country into war. In July of 1995, Bosnian Serb forces invaded a United Nations Safe Area that included the town of Srebrenica, where thousands of Bosnian Muslims had sought refuge from the surrounding violence. While Bosnian Muslim women and girls were forcibly displaced from Srebrenica following the invasion, the remaining 8,373 men and boys were systematically executed. In 2006, the International Court of Justice officially ruled that these events qualified as genocide. Today, ethnic divisions still divide the region. Serbian and Bosnian Serb leaders continue to deny that the Srebrenica Genocide ever took place.
In response to this denial, Bosnian-American artist Aida \\u0160ehovi\\u0107 created \\u0160TO TE NEMA [lit. \\u201cWhy are you not here?\\u201d], a nomadic monument commemorating the 8,373 Bosnian Muslims who died in the Srebrenica Genocide. \\u0160ehovi\\u0107 has been collecting the porcelain cups traditionally used for coffee service in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the goal of\\xa0having one cup for each victim. For the past 13 years, on July 11th \\u2013 the anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide \\u2013 \\u0160ehovi\\u0107 partners with local communities around the world to organize the \\u0160TO TE NEMA monument in the public square of a new city.
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Each successful annual rendition of the monument represents a triumph over the forces of rejection, exclusion, and denialism that encourage societies to look away from past atrocities and prevent vital communal remembrance and healing processes from taking place. Reflecting the inclusive and universal spirit of the monument, passersby are invited to participate in the construction of \\u0160TO TE NEMA by filling cups with Bosnian coffee and leaving them in the square, undrunk, in memory of the victims of the Srebrenica Genocide.
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