At UNSA, a discussion and exhibition with a purpose: 'Without Myself: The Drama of the Everyday in the Speech of Bosnian Women'

(Patria) - Instead of a traditional greeting for March 8 - International Women's Day, the University of Sarajevo marked this historic date by respecting and affirming women's efforts to achieve social equality. By opening an exhibition and holding a discussion with the author Šejla Šehabović and artist Dejan Slavuljica, the University of Sarajevo committed to opening a new academic space for discussion on women's issues and rights, primarily valuing the importance of free thought, sensitized optics, and artistic engagement. The discussion with the artists was led by literary and cultural theorist Merima Omeragić, a researcher at the University of Sarajevo. 

Instead of flowers, our intention is to break chains, to embark on emancipatory paths, because as Rosa Luxemburg said: "Those who do not move do not notice their chains."

"I want to capture a piece of the oral culture of Bosnian women, in the language in which I was raised."

This is the introductory sentence of the text with which the author Šejla Šehabović, in addition to announcing the exhibition and accompanying catalog, maps the place of Bosnian women in (contemporary) culture and everyday life. The project 'Without Myself: The Drama of the Everyday in the Speech of Women' is a synthesis of provoked female oral speech recorded in short notes by Šejla Šehabović, which cathartically capture the essence of the burden of lived experience subjected to various trials, and on the other hand, striking illustrations by Dejan Slavuljica, with which the artist captures the limiting material effects of the external world and the system that brutally and from the shadows marks women's lives. Through three thematic blocks titled: 'Body,' 'Orientation,' and 'Identity,' significant poles that determine women's existence are examined: physicality as pain and danger; direction towards sacrifice and suffering; and identity normative constraints/limitations dictated by patriarchal and desirable models. More specifically, it deals with internalized female fears of losing bodily integrity, fears of losing orientation and identity that lead to desubjectification and marginalization.

In harmony with women's voices that discursively "orally," thus traditionally conversationally, with original phrases, sometimes literarily refined, bear witness to difficult, profoundly moving, and deeply intimate experiences, and authentic drawings that, although one-dimensional without superfluous color, sovereignly navigate through the aporias of the text, the importance of conceptualizing the purpose of telling and depicting different dimensions of women's lives in artistic media is revealed. And what is art, if not a reflection of reality? And a space for the articulation of possible female selves marked by gender inequality that women as a population face, and a field of struggle for a better today. 

Happy March 8 - International Women's Day!