Bosnian Girl

How can art be used to disrupt and challenge patriarchal systems?

In Bosnian Girl artist Šejla Kamerić stares directly at the camera, holding our gaze. The overlaid text quotes graffiti by an unknown Dutch UN soldier found at an army barracks in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war (1992–95). Using the stylised poses found in fashion photography, Kamerić both challenges and embodies the soldier’s words. In this act, she stands for all women who have experienced prejudice because of their gender or identity. She hints at how women become markers of national identity, their bodies politicised as a way to uphold territories and borders. In her gaze, she asks us as viewers to be accountable for our own ways of looking.

Writing about her intentions, Kamerić said:

'We live in a constant war where the female body is used as territory. ‘Bosnian Girl’ is not me, but any girl or woman… anyone whose rights are denied. This work comes from Bosnia, but it tells a universal story of prejudice and bigotry.'

Bosnian Girl was first shown as street posters in the artist’s hometown of Sarajevo on 11 July 2003, the eighth anniversary of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. In 1993, during the Bosnian War, Srebrenica had been declared a safe zone by UN Protection Forces. The town was heavily populated by Bosnian Muslims escaping persecution by Bosnian Serb forces. In 1995 the Bosnian Serb Army invaded the town. The resulting genocide and war crimes remain one of the largest failures of the United Nations to protect those under their care. Bosnian Girl became a symbol of these failings, carried on placards at marches and protests. Beyond this, Bosnian Girl suggests the patriarchal structures that work to define women, and the possibility of art to contribute to the emancipation from them.

Tate Modern
Natalie Bell Building Level 2 West

Getting Here

20 June 2022 – 24 September 2023

Free

Miyako Ishiuchi, Yokosuka Story 1977

Yokosuka Story 1977, by the Japanese photographer Miyako Ishiuchi, comprises forty vintage black and white prints which are typically displayed in a large grid. As the title suggests, the work depicts the town of Yokosuka, a small port in Japan where Ishiuchi grew up during the 1950s and 1960s, when the town was the site of a large American naval base. In these years of military occupation the town was infiltrated by American culture and in turn the visual landscape reflected this struggle between local and foreign, past and present and the uncertainty of Japan’s future identity. Like other slightly older Japanese photographers associated with the ‘Provoke’ movement, such as Shomei Tomatsu and Daido Moriyama, with whom she worked, Ishiuchi was part of the post-war generation who used their cameras to record and explore what it meant to be Japanese at this pivotal moment in history. The Provoke movement experimented with photographic techniques in order to offer a more subjective and radical vision of society in Japan post-Hiroshima, focusing on the alienation and disaffection characterising urban life.

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artworks in Bosnian Girl

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