Šejla Kamerić

Eugster || Belgrade is poised to present a new body of work by Šejla Kamerić,
Mother is a Bitch, opening 2nd April 2022. 

The show will be accompanied by a conversation between the artist and Berlin-based curator Adriana Tranca, about witches, about sex, about self-determination, about collective radical imagination, domesticity, drugs and capitalism. And in true reclaim-manner, the conversation will not be linear, but circular, as time is not linear, but cyclical. Different parts of the written piece will be found across a wide array of platforms, marking networks and connections, opening portals for whomever dares to enter.

🧹🧙🏻‍♀️🔮🧿🌪🕯🌙🌬️🍄✨💎🎇🪔
🔯☯️💜🐈‍⬛🕯️🌒🔥
🏮🖤🕎🕸⚱️

The Man’s World is born of Women’s bodies; the same bodies that Man and
his World are trying relentlessly to subjugate, dominate, 
hunt and destroy. 
Mother is a Bitch, isn’t she?

Where is your body now, Šejla?

In a spasm, in pain. Trying to set itself free, to relax. It seeks attention, but it wants to be left alone. It is contradictory. The body does not stand still. It fights, and it gives in. It endures pain, and it feels joy. Never in one place and never accepted.
(The answer is written at 2am, in bed, in Sarajevo.)

Your body, and our female bodies by extrapolation, are occupying the gallery’s walls as part of Mother is a Bitch. The photographs in the show are impressive, both in size and in content. You seem to be playing with contradictory dynamics: quasy-naked and vulnerable, yet monumental and commanding. What do you see when you look at them, at the images and at the women they represent?

I see womankind but also mankind. Duality. Sexuality. Advertisement and ideology. The need to know, to learn. A different approach to our well-being. A hidden history of women that I would like to reveal. I’m showing a woman. Showing what is behind, covered, dressed up, decorated, and made up. Showing what is in the corner facing the wall.
Erratic and emotional. Irrational. Romantic and tragic. Daring. Funny. Hysterical. Different perspectives. Without them, we are in linear time, in tracks that do not lead us forward or reflect a true state of mind of an individual.
I see and want to show self-acceptance.

A woman and a broom, a tandem already absorbed by pop culture implying the presence of a witch. Could you please share some of your research and knowledge about the topic? 

/ to be continued