Šejla Kamerić
Šejla Kamerić belongs to the generation of Sarajevo artists who grew up in the war under three-and-a-half year’s long siege and shelling of the city. This biographical fact has much determined the attitude of this artist, as well as her understanding and practicing art. Learning about life in the cruelest manner and knowing how to transform what she has lived through into art is the essence of Kamerić’s work. There are two essential points in her work are: Personal viewpoints based on common experience about the outside world: hot issues of the local society related (or in opposition)
to the actual worldwide moral, socio- political subjects. Self-reflections based on personal experience about the existential values: surviving the siege and shelling of her city she learned the fine line between life and death, to separate the essential from the unimportant, to recognize the hierarchy of needs. It means that for Kamerić art is not the goal, but the means for self-identification—communicating own experiences, memories, and opinions—which she wants to share with or confront others. What makes Kamerić (and the group of “war generation” artists) essentially different from “other members of their generation” is the meaning of their works, and not the means they use. Furthermore, by getting on with her work without worrying about what art really is, or isn’t, she proves to be a member of that generation born in mass-media age, in which the main references are the media and the reality around them, and not the history of art. D.B.
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