“HERBARIUM” by Ismar Čirkinagić opening in Sarajevo on November 13 at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Ismar Čirkinagič’s project is based on a classical herbarium that classifies flora. The difference is that all the plants have been collected from the site of mass graves around the city of Prijedor in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Čirkinagić is a Bosnian-Danish visual artist who, since 2004, has been gathering plants from the Prijedor area and photographing the landscapes in which they were found. The plants are then dried, mounted behind glass, and paired with specific information about the mass grave site, in a reflection of the legacy of war and violence. The ultimate goal of the artist in this latest body of work is to present the elements of a new life that appears in places where lives have been abruptly cut short.
HERBARIUM is made up of 70 new pieces specifically for the new exhibition in Sarajevo and will be the first time the work has been exhibited in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The exhibition was a project of The VII Foundation, managed by VII Academy in Sarajevo, with the Danish Arts Council, Memory Module, KUMA International, the Museum of Contemporary art Ars Aevi, and The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina as partners.
Find out more about the work of Ismar Čirkinagić
