ADELA JUŠIĆ 2016
Adela Jušić
Women's Antifascist Front
Written by: Kaja Kraner
“In the territory of former socialist Yugoslavia among the new “anti-fa” and Neo-Marxist groups, we also witness historically uncontextualized reinterpretations and thus a contentual excision or annihilation of emancipatory politics and the achievements of socialist self-management. / … / In various round tables and panel discussions, superficial statements and theses regarding socialism and the position of women appear; their essence is a lapse into simplifying and misleading concepts as a consequence of assuming the western view of socialism together with its inherent, narrow logic of liberal feminism, which maintains unhistorical conceptions of patriarchy and with this also maintains divided, essentialistically simplified identity politics of women and men.” (Op. 5 BURCAR, Liljana, 2015, Restavracija kapitalizma: repatriarhizacija družbe, Sophia, Ljubljana, pp. 113114.)
During her residential stay Adela Jušić, the co-founder of Crvena Association for Culture and Art from Bosnia and Herzegovina, continued with her five-year program What has our fight brought us? in which she cooperated with colleagues in the frame of the aforementioned organization. The artist, who in her work primarily researches the theme of societal, economic and social position of women, had thus focused on the project Online Archive of the Antifascist Struggle of Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia and indirectly on the theme of women participation in the Second World War and in the Women's Antifascist Front (WAF); or more precisely, on the heritage and history of the political struggle in Yugoslavia from 1941 to the end of the 1950s with emphasis on the WAF section in Slovenia.
In her work, Jušić has critically addressed the WAF heritage and its position; despite the fact that WAF was the largest women’s organization in SFRY and that, in the period of war mobilization, it received significant political support and promises to implement a process of systematically solving the issue of women’s inequality, life after the war quickly returned back to its settled (patriarchal) ways and the question of “women’s rights” was (again) marginalized. In 1953, WAF was accordingly dissolved by the Peoples’ front, the societal position of women was domesticated and the socialist society was gradually (additionally) re-patriarchalized. In her work, Jušić focused on the period between 1941 and 1951, which is exactly the period when it is possible to register the process of transformation and “re-patriarchalization” in public representations. During the residential stay, she found documentary examples of such media, especially books, in local antiquity shops and then proceeded to intervene in the visual representations of women, their position and status.
MEET THE RESIDENT: Adela Jušić
11th of October at 7PM Gallery K18 Koroška street 18, Maribor.
The presentation of the current GRM resident Adela Jušić from Sarajevo (BiH) will contain an introduction of the project Online archive of the Antifascist struggle of women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia, which is a result of a 5-year program of Association for Culture and Art CRVENA "What has our struggle given us?" (www.afzarhiv.org). Furthermore, 5 of her works will be presented, that are related to the subject of participation of women in Second World War and Antifascist Front of Women in Yugoslavia, and in general, emancipatory heritage and history of women's political struggle in Yugoslavia from 1941 till the end of the 1950s.
The project she will be working on in the frame of GuestRoomMaribor is based on the research of Antifascist Front of Women that had around 2 million members and was the largest women’s organization ever on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia and wider. After the war, it is considered by the political top that “women’s issue” was solved in Yugoslavia. The promises of political elites given to women at the time of mobilizing for war never came true. Equality was never achieved, and the process of women’s emancipation, that was “too fast” became a direct threat to patriarchal attitudes in society. The People’s Front decided to abolish the Antifascist Front of Women in 1953. Again the women were about to be domesticated, placed back into the private sphere of the house, to perform their “natural” roles. This research will examine the ways women’s roles were changed, created, imposed during this period from 1941 to the end of the 1950s.
Adela Jušić was born in 1982 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she lives and works. Jušić graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts. The University of Sarajevo in 2007, MA, printmaking department and holds MA in Human Rights and Democracy in South East Europe from Sarajevo and Bologna Universities, 2013). She is a co-founder and working at cultural projects at the Association for Culture and Art Crvena since 2010. Jušić has exhibited in around 100 international exhibitions including Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain; Videonale, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Image Counter Image, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, Balkan Insight, Pompidou Center, Paris etc. She has participated in several artists in residence programmes (ISCP, New York; Kulturkontakt, Vienna; i.a.a.b. Basel). She won Young Visual Artist Award for the best young Bosnian artist in 2010, Henkel Young Artist Price CEE in 2011, and Special Award of Belgrade October Salon in 2013. She participated in numerous panels, workshops, and conferences (London School of Economics, Royal College of Art, London, UK etc.)
Further information: http://adelajusic.wordpress.com/
11th of October at 7PM Gallery K18 Koroška street 18, Maribor.
The presentation of the current GRM resident Adela Jušić from Sarajevo (BiH) will contain an introduction of the project Online archive of the Antifascist struggle of women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia, which is a result of a 5-year program of Association for Culture and Art CRVENA "What has our struggle given us?" (www.afzarhiv.org). Furthermore, 5 of her works will be presented, that are related to the subject of participation of women in Second World War and Antifascist Front of Women in Yugoslavia, and in general, emancipatory heritage and history of women's political struggle in Yugoslavia from 1941 till the end of the 1950s.
The project she will be working on in the frame of GuestRoomMaribor is based on the research of Antifascist Front of Women that had around 2 million members and was the largest women’s organization ever on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia and wider. After the war, it is considered by the political top that “women’s issue” was solved in Yugoslavia. The promises of political elites given to women at the time of mobilizing for war never came true. Equality was never achieved, and the process of women’s emancipation, that was “too fast” became a direct threat to patriarchal attitudes in society. The People’s Front decided to abolish the Antifascist Front of Women in 1953. Again the women were about to be domesticated, placed back into the private sphere of the house, to perform their “natural” roles. This research will examine the ways women’s roles were changed, created, imposed during this period from 1941 to the end of the 1950s.
Adela Jušić was born in 1982 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she lives and works. Jušić graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts. The University of Sarajevo in 2007, MA, printmaking department and holds MA in Human Rights and Democracy in South East Europe from Sarajevo and Bologna Universities, 2013). She is a co-founder and working at cultural projects at the Association for Culture and Art Crvena since 2010. Jušić has exhibited in around 100 international exhibitions including Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain; Videonale, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Image Counter Image, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, Balkan Insight, Pompidou Center, Paris etc. She has participated in several artists in residence programmes (ISCP, New York; Kulturkontakt, Vienna; i.a.a.b. Basel). She won Young Visual Artist Award for the best young Bosnian artist in 2010, Henkel Young Artist Price CEE in 2011, and Special Award of Belgrade October Salon in 2013. She participated in numerous panels, workshops, and conferences (London School of Economics, Royal College of Art, London, UK etc.)
Further information: http://adelajusic.wordpress.com/