Just Pass

In the beginning of 1999, Šejla Kamerić performed a three-day action called For My Sake. Every morning and evening, on three announcement boards in front of the Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts, she mounted enlarged prints of the photos she made on her way to and from the Academy. The photographs, taken from the same corner and at the same time every day, symbolized the conclusion of one chapter of her life, her studies.
Artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina who belong to the post-war generation grew up and developed in specific surroundings. Without any basis in that which happened earlier in the local art scene and in the arts in general, they explored different media and their own realities (social context). Although she belongs to that generation, Šejla Kamerić distinguishes herself from it in the way she interprets and reflects those realities. The thought process (concept) is essential to her works, while esthetics, although strongly present, are secondary. They are characterized by the calling of attention to that which we don't ordinarily notice, to the lack of our perception or interest. Reacting to her surroundings, she sets a series of questions into motion, but also leaves room for interpretation. Regardless of which technique or medium Šejla Kamerić uses in her site-specific works, her characteristic method is copy-paste, or transferring details from the direct surroundings of one context into another (dislocation), by which they acquire new meaning. Copy Paste is the title of her first work at the SCCA -Sarajevo exhibition "Meeting Point," where, next to the original tree growing wild at the top of a dilapidated wall, she mounted a copy, an enlarged photograph of the same tree taken a few months before, when it wasn't flourishing.
She always thinks and reacts to the context in which she finds herself; whether that is Sarajevo, Ljubljana, Washington or Russia. Thus, on the almost completely deserted out-of-the-way road to Perejaslavi-Zalesskij in Russia, between two meadows, she drew a striped pedestrian crossing with chalk. Her first strong feeling after arriving in Russia was the feeling of insecurity, which manifested itself as well in the unmarked pedestrian crossings which she came across even in Moscow. So she created for herself (and for chance passers-by), at least for a short time, a space in which she felt secure.
In the video work American Dream, made during her residency in Washington, D.C., in mid-2000, she again reacted to her own position and surroundings, creating a fake video letter to her family and friends at home. The video contains all the elements typical to "letters" of guest-workers or immigrants-status symbols of a new, better life: a house, an automobile, pets, "new friends." This video was shown along with a second video, called Here, at Galerija Skuc in Ljubljana, in the form of a video installation in which reality was confronted with fantasy. The video Here deals with a confrontation with the environment that surrounds her in Sarajevo. Recording every day the program of an independent television station, on which one for the most part sees only a 'live' picture of a certain rather dull traffic intersection in Sarajevo, Šejla Kamerić transmits a part of Sarajevan reality. The picture of the intersection is the same from day to day. Only the weather and time of day change. The passers-by are not aware of the camera that records them, even though they have a chance to see these pictures every day on the ail: No matter what happens to her specifically or to anyone else in Sarajevo, the general picture stays the same and inexorably unchanging, and drives everyone to ask: "What am I doing here?"
At the Third European Biennial of Contemporary Arts Manifesta, held in Ljubljana in 2000, Šejla Kamerić set up light boxes bearing the inscriptions EU Citizens and Others on the Tromostovlje. Her response to the "borderline syndrome" was to point out the problem of inequality of Europeans, which is still present even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the integration of Eastern and Western Europe. In the center of Ljubljana she created a situation in which she often finds herself She conjured up the feeling of crossing a border towards "a Europe without borders."

Lejla Hodzić