Fildžans of Wisdom

Interview of Aida Šehović conducted and written by Erin Brown and Gabrielė Žukauskaitė. Published in KUMA International’s second issue of Mahala Magazine.

How did you develop into this creative / politically engaged person? What does being perceived as such an artist mean to you?

To me being an artist means being awake - that means being really, really curious and interested about the world that’s around us. The type of work that I am interested in doing is only trying to address some of the really difficult parts of our world, or being human. But I’m very mindful that I’m not offering a real solution. I think my own past, what happened to me as a person, I experienced being persecuted from my hometown, being displaced, living as a refugee, then an immigrant, and having to adapt to the different cultures, societies and countries-- I’m not sure if I would have become an artist if that didn’t happen. The questions that arose from those experiences are the questions I still have to this day, and, to me, it seemed that art allowed for not just a creative way to confront those questions, but also an absolute freedom in thinking about [them]. How does art address the gaps in healing and understanding? Is there a gap, let’s say, between a victim that needs to heal and the perpetrator? Art creates space for everybody. And I think really good art, in this case, creates space for the victims, as for the perpetrators, because they’re not just that, they’re also the children and/or the parents of the perpetrators. In the case of Što Te Nema, there is space for them as well. There’s nothing that’s in the way of you placing the cup down and filling it with coffee. The work doesn’t exclude that, it invites that, and it doesn’t point fingers. We know there’s no confusion about what happened, but at the same time this space is open.

Why is it important for you to use art to heal trauma?

I would say it’s a way of communicating across time, space and borders or anything that separates us. It gives you absolute freedom, both in terms of content and subject you want to focus on, but also how you want to approach something, think about it, and share it with the world. You make up your rules, your art practice. In the beginning, it felt like Sto Te Nema grew out of rage and anger and disappointment that I didn’t want to accept, that I couldn’t believe that the world could let something like that happen. It’s completely incomprehensible to me that humans sit down and organize themselves and make a plan how to kill other humans and do that in such a brutal, brutal way. But I think that art allows us to see [genocide] for what it is, with all of its sides, and I think that art also allows us to remember the trauma. Personally, art work helped me overcome that and sort of regain belief in humanity again, because it allows us to never forget that that’s actually a human experience. Anybody can be a perpetrator, and anybody can be a victim. So there’s a certain level of truth, uncompromising truth, and freedom in all of these things that art opens up when dealing with trauma. I think that because I believe that humans inherently have empathy and love for each other, and all the violence and hatred is a learned behavior

“Što Te Nema” seems to be all about challenging indifference and maintaining memory: Can this kind of art ever be “too confronting”?

To me, it is not confrontational as I am just showing or pointing to something that’s already there. The genocide happened in Srebrenica. Genocides happen all the time. There are people directly and indirectly impacted by it. There are people profiting from it, people who participate in it, people who are denying it. And all of that exists even before the work comes. I would even go as far as to say that I’m not even confronting indifference, rather, I’m just reminding you of your own humanity. I also think that the societies that we live in, and the ways that we communicate are unfortunately adding to the lack of empathy and inducing indifference. I’m just refusing to accept that that’s normal. It’s not confronting, I’m just being human. You don’t choose where you’re born or what your name is. And that completely determines whether you can be a victim of genocide or not.

Who are the most important people (according to you) that take part in the commemoration?

I actually always think of it like concentric circles: if you throw a stone and then there’s the first circle, then the next circle, and the next circle, and next circle. For me, the first circle is the families who are directly impacted by [the genocide], and they are the ones who collected the first cups. Everybody has been donating cups, but the first 923 cups were collected by Women of Srebrenica, so if the work didn’t have their support and blessing from the beginning, I don’t know if it could have come into existence. And then the next circle is like the Bosnians, or maybe their kids, you know, younger generations who have inherited that, and then this next circle are the Bosnians, and then you have the local community in whatever town/city the monument was in, and then the larger international community. So I don’t know if there’s any group that has preference or importance over the other. But I also think of the young people--it’s you guys who are inheriting the world, so if the work of Sto Te Nema is irrelevant to your generations, then we kind of failed, right?

How have the years spent with Sto Te Nema affected your relationship with your own personal identity/ shaped your own development as an artist?

I think it defined completely who I am as a person and as an artist. It almost became like a model, a way of thinking for me as an artist which I’m grateful for. It hasn’t been an easy path in any way or shape or form. And I say that not to ask for pity, but to recognize that all parts of it were difficult--for example, the decision to collect the cups, it would have been much easier for me to buy 1,000 cups, they’re not that expensive, but instead I decided that I want to collect the cups. All the decisions and rules around what Sto te Nema is I didn’t make them to make it hard or difficult on purpose, I just thought that was necessary to create what needed to be created. I feel really lucky that the project came at the beginning when I was very naive and innocent in terms of what being an artist is and how to make work, I had to become comfortable by making mistakes in public. Only maybe in the last few years, I recognize and embrace that path and I think I should be proud that it is beautiful and that it is changing, that I didn’t wake up with some perfect idea. It’s impossible to make that kind of work and approach this kind of subject matter assuming you have all the answers. On a personal level, I saw that change from the beginning from a place of rage that ‘nobody cares, to realizing that it’s not true that people don’t care, but more like that people don’t know what to do. And that’s precisely the problem of the world that we live in. That we are presented with this information, but it’s not clear where there’s room for us to engage or act upon that. And also, I must mention to all of those who will be reading this that you can really begin with zero. Because we began with zero. I know it sounds almost ideal--oh you can do anything. But you can. You can use the resources, whatever you have around you. I just used a cup. You just need to try.