Exhibition "Places of Pain" Travels to St. Louis, USA After Austria

The multimedia traveling exhibition "Places of Pain," co-authored by Professor Hariz Halilović and Dr. Adis Fejzić, was opened at the Bosniak Cultural Center over the weekend, attended by numerous visitors and members of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian academic community in Austria.

The exhibition is the result of many years of research by social anthropologist Professor Halilović and the artistic work of visual artist and sculptor Dr. Fejzić. Although the authors have been living and working in distant Australia for almost two decades, Bosnia and Herzegovina is the primary focus of their academic and artistic interest, Halilović's writing, and Fejzić's paintings and sculptures. As Halilović stated, where anthropology ends, art begins, and with this exhibition, the authors have bridged the artistic gap between the scientific and the fictional, creating a unique anthropological-artistic story about Bosnia and its places of pain.

- Places of pain are a Bosnian taboo subject, something difficult to talk about, something we all publicly remain silent about, yet we know it pains us all. These places are within us, in our memories and feelings, in what we feel as emptiness within ourselves, as phantom pain of parts of ourselves that are no longer there, but which we continue to feel - the authors emphasized in their address.

They also stressed that any resemblance to real people and places is intentional, and the role of the imaginary and creative is not to beautify, but to compensate for and supplement a mutilated reality, to lead us into the omnipresent past, into a timeless interspace filled with emotions.

Many visitors recognized themselves in what the silent images conveyed more than words.

This traveling global exhibition has been shown in Sarajevo, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Vienna since November 2016, and after Vienna, it continues its journey to St. Louis in the USA.

In Austria, a Memorandum of Cooperation was also signed between the Bosniak Academic Association of Austria and the Australian-Bosnian Academic Forum, two organizations that supported the realization of this exhibition, writes NAP.