Adela Jušić: PRIKRITO, gibanje / STEALTH, movement

The opening ceremony at the Multimedia center KIBLA in Maribor, starting on Wednesday, 7 December 2016, at 7 p. m. with a discussion with the artist.
The exhibition will be showing until 21 December 2016.

A selection of the pivotal works by artist Adela Jušić, which trace forms of national trauma expressed in a distinctly personal way, unfolds the results of her work over a period of the last nine years. The artworks act as a sharp amendment to the disinterested, bored and tired Western perspective, and as a provocation to our numbed feeling and sense of empathy.

Adela's generation (she was born in 1982 in Sarajevo), just like the generations before it, was, and still is strongly marked by an experience of a life during the siege of their hometown, their birthplace, which was besieged for 1425 days, from April 1992 to February 1996.

Through the exhibition PRIKRITO, gibanje / STEALTH, movement, one can observe creative transitions, from the initial ones dealing with intense personal memories, to the later ones covering a more universal understanding of the complex real life experiences of the war conflict, as well as the consequences that it caused. The most recent works are fueled by the experience of war, which happened twenty years ago, and use this topic to express a critique of the imperfections and hypocrisy of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian society in the present time.

The work Shooters Ready will be presented for the first time, alongside the works The Sniper, Who needs DRNČ and Ride the Recoil.

The exhibition comprises the following works:

The Sniper, 2007: the video provides a detailed account of the individual experience of Adela's father, who was a sniper in the Bosnian Army up until his death in combat on 3 December 1992. The wok is a profound reflection of loss and mourning, placed inside the context of everyday "loss" of individual lives during the early years of the siege.
https://adelajusic.wordpress.com/works/the-sniper/

Who needs DRNČ?, 2008, (/drnch/ (Bosnian) noun from abbr. “Deterdžentni rastvarač naslaga čađi” – Detergent solvent of soot layers, a type of weapon cleaner): video performance, in which the artist cleans her father's rusty sniper rifle using oil; it is a ritual of memory full of challenges, founded on a break from normality, and symbolically depicted by including the children into the everyday chores of a frontline soldier at a time when he is not on active duty.
https://adelajusic.wordpress.com/works/who-needs-drnc/

The work Ride the Recoil, 2013, is based on the video game Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2, which is set in Sarajevo. It was created in collaboration with Ervin Prašljivić, and with Ognjen Šavija as sound producer. The exhibition will feature the multimedia part of the project, the sound installation Tactic's Guide, the video Young Sniper from Sarajevo, the video Sniper Shot, and the series of photographs Little Girl, which confronts us wwith a series of pictures of a young girl wearing red shorts, taken from the top of a Sarajevo building, from where snipers used to operate.. The installation was awarded with the special prize of the 54th October Salon in Belgrade.
https://adelajusic.wordpress.com/works/ride-the-recoil/

Shooter Ready, 2016 depicting the training of Bosnian-Herzegovinian women in America for a mission in Afganistan, will be presented in Maribor as a world premiere.

The four main aspects of the artistic conceptions of Adela Jušić are her personal biography, conflict and the politics of conflict, a strong commitment to feminism and institutional critique, and a practice based on collectivism and solidarity. If we consider the works of Jušić as a whole, we can observe the personal development of the artist in a time of war, which is presented to us without a sense of pity or sentimentality.
The best art from BiH has made a giant step from reflecting the war to reflecting the current post-conflict society of BiH, which had been damaged and profligated due to the post-war development. Seeing the art of adela Jušić in this light, there is a lot of evidence to support the fact that her works presented in this art show belong to the most interesting and persuasive works from the area of the former Yugoslavia.

More: https://adelajusic.wordpress.com/

Produced by: Association for Contemporary Art X-OP.
Co-produced by: Association for Culture and Education KIBLA, Association for Art and Audio-Video Production KODA MODRO (CODE BLUE), Pekarna Magdelenske mreže – Soba za goste / Guest Room.

Info: Peter-Tomaz.Dobrila@x-op.eu