In the early stages of the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian Muslims were mandated to wear a distinctive white armband and display a white flag or sheet on their homes, marking them apart from their neighbors. This piece of art is meticulously crafted from strips of white sheets and tablecloths, a direct allusion to this painful period.
As the conflict unfolded, separation became more pronounced. Muslim men and women were segregated, with young boys undergoing further division based on their height. Boys under 150cm were permitted to remain with their mothers, while those exceeding this height were compelled to depart with their fathers, often facing an uncertain fate. This artwork hangs at precisely 150cm, symbolizing this grim distinction.
The lower segment of the artwork is imbued with a natural coffee dye, a potent emblem of community in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before the war, citizens of all backgrounds would come together over coffee, transcending religious or ethnic lines. After the conflict, many Bosnian Muslims returned to their homes, only to discover that other families had occupied their dwellings. In a poignant gesture, they were sometimes offered coffee in their own cups, a symbol of displacement and dislocation.
The piece itself spans the width of a human body, extending onto the floor, evoking thoughts of burials, mass graves, shrouds, and mortality. It bears the title ‘Lie Down,’ which serves as a haunting reminder of the last words uttered by many before facing execution.
During the grim process of unearthing mass graves and the quest to identify the victims within them, forensic teams uncovered cloth ligatures and blindfolds at various mass grave sites in Srebrenica. These ligatures and blindfolds often shared the same fabric source, serving as crucial evidence during the Hague trials, demonstrating a level of organisation and substantiating claims of genocide. Here, all the cloth strips are knotted, resembling their potential use for such a somber purpose.
