Sandra Bradvić recently established the Association Sklop, which is based in Sarajevo and engages in research, documentation and presentation of art in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

How did it happen that you came from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Switzerland and that you then decided to work related spend more time again in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Sarajevo?

I arrived to Switzerland in 1991. We first lived in Brunnen, Schwyz Canton, and we then moved to Zurich in 1997, where I studied Art History, German Literature & Linguistics and Mass Media Research and earned the Master of Arts from the University of Zurich. I worked at different institutions, such as ETH Zurich as a scientific associate at the Department of History and Theory of Architecture, Kunsthalle Basel and various galleries in Zurich. After having engaged for a while in practical curatorial work at large institutions, I felt the need to dedicate myself more to the exhibition practice from a scientific point of view and to deal with those contents that I personally am mostly interested in. A PhD thesis on curatorial practices was an ideal opportunity for this. The topic of my PhD thesis on the development of contemporary art in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its presentation was accepted at the University of Bern in 2014, Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann, who, among other things, focuses on history of exhibitions, being my supervisor. This is how I as a researcher first came to Sarajevo in spring 2015.

Why did you decide to come and live in Sarajevo?

Everything I needed for my PhD research is located in Bosnia and Herzegovina: artists, archives, documents, curators and many other cultural workers that I do interviews with. I travelled throughout the region and gathered materials from various personal artistic or institutional archives. However, an issue is the fact that many artists moved away and took with them documents about their work, which are now located in various towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region, even in other continents. Another issue is the fact that many works of art were lost or destroyed during the war. The first part of my thesis work, which consisted of the search for information and documents, was thus quite demanding and required a lot of travelling, because there is no systematisation and full art archive. One is continuously facing certain lacks, elements that were lost or in case of which there are imprecise memories, so that sometimes it was necessary to discuss with several participants only to be able to identify the year when a catalogue, publication was issued, an exhibition took place or a work of art was created. However, I love working with archive materials, so that all of this is a great pleasure for me. What I am doing is in a way creating a data base in order to have a basis that can be used to research and start understanding the conditions under which the artistic and curator practice developed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in early 1980s and how it was implemented.

Which period from the more recent history of art in Bosnia and Herzegovina are you most interested in?

I am interested in contemporary art in Yugoslavia, which starts with the conceptual art in 1960s and 1970s, and as regards Bosnia and Herzegovina, I am particularly interested in 1980s, which were ground-breaking in the broadest sense. Instead of being interested in artistic work with a single medium, such as painting or sculpture, I am rather interested in interdisciplinary art, when various forms of art get in touch and dialogue with each other and when artists examine borders between various means of expression.

Why are 1980s so important for contemporary art in Bosnia and Herzegovina and are still a great inspiration for young artists?

In 2011, 7 cultural institutions were closed permanently or temporarily in Sarajevo, out of which the closing of the National Museum attracted most attention of the public. This made me research the reasons why they were closed, which result from the highly complex and instable cultural and political system of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to ask the question who, if not official cultural institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is supporting and building the artistic scene. Very soon, I met agile artists and curators who work at their own initiative and outside of institutions, which is a typical phenomenon of a society subject to the so-called process of transition. However, such alternative forms of artistic work started much earlier, in 1980s, because even then, there was very little space for young artists and their new artistic practices that have not yet been established in Bosnia and Herzegovina, such as performances and video works. My research has lead me to the artistic group Zvono (Sarajevo, 1982-1992) and a series of exhibitions in various formats called Yugoslav Documents (Sarajevo, 1984-1989), which was initiated by the artist Jusuf Hadžifejzović. In addition to individual works of art, I was actually even more interested in the manner in which these artists organised themselves into collectives, what their exhibitions looked like and how they changed over time. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, self-organised groups are still highly relevant, maybe even more current than before, because they do not only constitute a potential, self-selected manner of work, but very frequently also constitute the only possible manner of work, although for different cultural and political reasons than in 1980s.

Given your educational and academic possibilities, you could have gone to any city in the world to work on your PhD thesis and build a career. What was your motivation to select Sarajevo as the city in which you are currently living and working?

After I graduated, it was very important for me to first acquire practical professional experience and I was lucky to do this at some of the internationally renowned scientific and exhibition institutions such as ETH Zurich, Kunsthalle Basel and Galerie Hauser & Wirth. Such experiences were extremely important for me and they still have an impact on my work. However, it was indispensable to find my way to topics and contents that are more related to my cultural roots that I am intimately connected to. I felt the need to experience as an author a region where my mother tongue is spoken. Language is a very personal and intimate thing and I felt the need to hear it around me. I am here in Bosnia and Herzegovina maybe mostly 1/1. Here I do not feel any barriers between myself and other persons. In Switzerland, I have been fully immerged since the very beginning, given the fact that my mother had already been working there and had a Swiss partner. I did not have many contacts to Bosnians and Herzegovinians, except unless they were accidentally at the same school, whereas all of my best friends were mostly Swiss. Then the war happened and many years after the war, I travelled to Bosnia and Herzegovina only sporadically, maybe only for a week every several years, not more often. Only after the studies in 2006 and practice in the Dutch Van Abbemuseum, where I read a short text about the group Zvono in a catalogue for the first time, my interest for this region came to life through art and my profession. Since I started visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina more often and began to make myself more acquainted with museums and galleries.

You have already organised exhibitions of Swiss and Bosnian and Herzegovinian artists?

The first exhibition I organised independently was in a recently opened off-space in Zurich, Dienstgebäude, with the artist duo Goran Galić and Gian Reto Gredig, who dealt with war photo reportage-related topics back then. After that, I organised the exhibition of the Swiss artist, Stefan Sulzer, in 2010. Sulzer dealt with the tragic destruction of documents of the former National Library in the Sarajevo City Hall and how to make the disappeared documents visible again. I also organised an exhibition with Emir Šehanović in Neuchatel, at the Contemporary Art Centre, which was later also opened in Tuzla at the Ismet Mujezinović Atelier.

What is the situation of young artists in Bosnia and Herzegovina like and what opportunities do they have to work and exhibit?

If you grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina and if you are living here, it is almost impossible not to deal with post-conflict society topics. However, there is also a younger generation of artists whose topics draw on the immediate urban and cultural environment, which are not necessarily war-related. In spite of the complex living conditions and problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina that a citizen faces every day, some young artists manage to somehow overcome them, to define their topics, manner and place of work in an individual manner and to still remain authentic, which really is not easy. A large number of international foundations are still channelling their funds towards certain social and political topics related to the issues of the post-conflict life. Of course, facing the past and overcoming traumas is very important and necessary, however, when donors and sponsors are the ones that define topics that artists deal with, such policy of financing becomes questionable and counter-productive. For an artist, it is very important to stay true to his/her topics and not to adapt his/her work beyond recognition. In terms of cultural policy institutions, what is needed in my opinion is more trust and respect for artists and their different, frequently critical view of the world and living circumstances. It is necessary to encourage various topics and forms of artistic expression, in order to avoid taboos, which always unavoidably result in conformism. I believe that it is very important to work on exchanges of artists, their gatherings and group exhibitions, which is always a great inspiration and an impetus to develop different approaches.

You recently established the Association Sklop, which is truly a big and brave step. What activities are you preparing at Sklop?

Sklop is an association that aims to research, document and present art. Part of the concept is related to the issue of missing archives, which I already mentioned. It is planned to organise 2-4 exhibitions per year, during which young contemporary artists will be presented, and Sklop will also focus on historically important phenomena of Bosnian and Herzegovinian and international artistic, curator and publication practice. A very important part of the work of the Association Sklop is the organisation of the Award Zvono for young artists up to 35 years of age from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The award is part of a larger international network Young Visual Artist Award, which includes 11 Southeast European countries and which was established by two US foundations in 1990. This award has been presented in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2006. Up until last year, the local partner for the organisation of the award Zvono in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art, and as of this year, this function was assumed by the Association Sklop in cooperation with the Trust for Mutual Understanding and Residency Unlimited from New York, which awards the winner with a two-month stay in New York. My goal is to include as many young art historians from Bosnia and Herzegovina as possible in the competition for the award and generally all activities of Sklop as curators, authors or through student practice and to thus support them in acquiring the first experiences in their professional work.

Have you also faced obstacles in your work or problems that were not easy to solve?

At the very beginning of my stay in Bosnia and Herzegovina, everyone was scaring me, telling me to expect confusing and unclear instructions in administration and that everything would last very long. However, during the registration of the association, I really had good experiences, because the cooperation with persons from administrative departments of ministries was very professional and efficient. Although administrative processes are different from those in Switzerland, I was given kind explanations regarding all parts of that process. The Association Sklop has just been established, the work is just starting, and the situation in culture and art in Bosnia and Herzegovina is certainly not easy. However, I believe that the experience I acquired in Switzerland can certainly be very useful. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where structures are much less stable than in Switzerland, there is also much more distrust towards them, which is fully understandable. Those who lived abroad for a long time have different experiences and approach to things and communication, and I therefore think that their presence here is very important, because different experiences give them the possibility to exchange and apply such experiences in a useful manner, which might be a good example that some things in Bosnia and Herzegovina can also be done differently, at least up to a certain extent.

How do you personally feel living and working in Sarajevo?

I feel good, increasingly good, because I have specific steps ahead of me, I have work and a goal. On the one hand, it is the PhD thesis that I am about to complete, and on the other hand, it is the association that is starting to operate and that gave me a long-term work perspective.

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Links:

Tages Woche, January 03, 2016.

TV N1, February 26, 2016.

Zvono Award