Fragments of Identity

27 September 2015

The Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo was founded in 1972 as the first Academy of Fine Arts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and became one of the forerunners in Bosnian contemporary art. Academy continued its operation throughout the war years (1992-1995) in besieged Sarajevo and participated in important international art projects.

Images of Our Time: Works From the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo brings together works in various media created by undergraduate and graduate students, as well as graduates of the six faculties of the academy, including painting, sculpture, art education, printmaking, graphic and product design. The works survey contemporary art in Bosnia Herzegovina and offer comments and reflections by its young artists on the history, and social, political, economic and cultural issues of the country, as well as discussing the use of traditional elements in contemporary contexts.

An engaged relationship to important social and economic issues overlaps with explorations and critiques of social reality, the space and time we live and act in and with examinations of identity.

Nedim Đikić, Prisoner of His Mind, 2012, Steel and Polyester, 28 x 22 x 28 cm

Lejla Cehajic, Woman with Mirror, 2010, Mixed Media, 22 x 27 x 21 cm

Hence a significant number of works focus on portraits and self-portraits that invite a re-examination of the premise of the great master of the avant-garde, Paul Klee, that every artist must have an ‘eye that sees’ and an ‘eye that feels’. Complex networks of social interactions and ways of ‘constructing one’s own identity’ make this task difficult and require responsibility.

The exhibition Images of Our Time:Works from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo took place at the Pera Museum between 04 September - 01 November 2015.

Reality Bites!

Reality Bites!

Works by a large number of students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo deal with current and often painful themes from the socio-political, economic and cultural reality, raising awareness, appealing, warning, opening issues and offering new interpretations.

I Copy Therefore I Am

I Copy Therefore I Am

Suggesting alternative models for new social and economic systems, SUPERFLEX works appear before us as energy systems, beverages, sculptures, copies, hypnosis sessions, infrastructure, paintings, plant nurseries, contracts, or specifically designed public spaces.

A Photographer’s Biography Pascal Sebah

A Photographer’s Biography Pascal Sebah

Following the opening of his studio, “El Chark Societe Photographic,” on Beyoğlu’s Postacılar Caddesi in 1857, the Levantine-descent Pascal Sébah moves to yet another studio next to the Russian Embassy in 1860 with a Frenchman named A. Laroche, who, apart from having worked in Paris previously, is also quite familiar with photographic techniques.