Šejla Kamerić – Sarajevo, mon amour

by Anselm Wagner

“…Merely by changing the context, Kamerićs public actions succeed in unveiling the absurdity of the dominant political discourse and its fixation on the nation as a fetish. Borders are drawn in a process of inclusion and exclusion, by which groups define themselves and distinguish between “us” and “them”. The borders are often drawn in the manner of bodily excretion: what was originally its own thing now becomes excretion, faeces. In about 1994/95 a Dutch UNPROFOR soldier scratched a racist joke onto the wall of his military barracks in Potočari (he was a part of the unit that was to become sadly famous at the unhindered massacre of Srebrenica): “No teeth …? A mustache [sic] …? Smel [sic] like shit …? Bosnian girl!” In a spectacular poster, postcard and advertising campaign Kamerić had herself portrayed as a spotless, beautiful cover-girl with the ugly graffiti from Potočari projected onto her chest, to attack western arrogance towards her compatriots (as well as the half-hearted commitment to protecting them that resulted). Here Kamerić deliberately used the stylistic elements that are traditionally used to make an icon of the female (big dark eyes with a dreamy gaze, ethereal dissolution of the body), to serve as a screen for the projection of male desire, while entangling them with the racist-misogynist projection of the soldier’s joke…”