Large exhibition by Safet Zec - Tears and Prayer to open in Sarajevo City Hall on July 3

(Patria) - On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, a large exhibition by Safet Zec - Tears and Prayer will open on July 3 in the Sarajevo City Hall.

The work of Safet Zec reminds that tragedies are not statistics but real lives. His paintings contain no symbols or slogans, only bodies, gestures and traces left by absence. That is how one could describe the new large exhibition by Safet Zec, which will include works from several of his most famous cycles: Tears, Prayer, Exodus and Embraces.

“I have been living for years in that need, in fact, and awareness that we all must - we live moments when we all must, in fact, contribute to that scale, I said, of good and evil, because the devil will take us all. We have powerful technologies, man is powerful, but he loses kindness, loses humanity,” says Zec.

The exhibition will not seek pity but understanding of what happened - and awareness of what is still happening elsewhere.

“I was in flight in 1943, carried like this. Therefore, if that is not universal - now they are carrying in Gaza, carrying in Ukraine - I believe I possess the strength and quality for the whole world to understand,” Zec continues.

This is not the first exhibition dedicated to Srebrenica. But perhaps it is the most direct. As witnesses of the past retreat into silence, and interpretations increasingly obscure the facts, the exhibition Tears and Prayer reminds: art can – and must – remain in the service of memory. Without pathos, titles and noise. Just a gaze that remains. That is the face of truth.