Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić
– b. 1980. in Sarajevo. Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Sarajevo. She holds an MA from the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts, Japan and an MSc in Culture and Society from LSE. She obtained a PhD in Art and Media Theory at the University of Arts, Belgrade. Jasmina was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science international research fellow at the Faculty of Policy Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto (2018-2020). Her main fields of research are politics of memory and identity in the Balkans and Okinawa, the entanglement of gender and violence, and material culture. She has published her research in Third Text and Southeastern Europe.
My work lies at the intersection of writing and drawing1. These two parts of my life are not always equally distributed with time and attention. Sometimes I spend more time writing, rewriting and editing papers that have not necessarily anything to do with art or its practice. I write academic papers and conduct ethnographic research on topics that personally obsess me, for various reasons. These are injustice, discrimination, violence, gender, memory, time. Similarly, I explore such themes in my drawings. Yet the result is, understandably, very different.
My first-year drawing professor, Lucien Massaert, said, if I remember well, that we do art as some do therapy. Instead of starting a psychoanalysis, I try to explain to myself my own experience and the world that surrounds me by writing and drawing2. Just as my work is divided into two spheres (i.e., theory and practice), so is my identity. I grew up speaking French. Today I dream, read and think in French but it is not my mother tongue. I miss French as I feel I am constantly missing a part of myself. As Edward Said, most of the time, I feel I am out of place3. Being out of place is sometimes lonely yet a rewarding experience. It enables me not only to see things from different perspectives but to be continuously curious about the world. That is probably why I decided to study in Okinawa when I was finishing my undergraduate studies in Sarajevo.
I encountered Okinawa first through a book I read as an undergraduate student in Sarajevo around 1999. This happened by accident, with the help of Bernard Leach and Yanagi Muneyoshi. The book in question, Artisan et inconnu – La beauté dans l’esthétique japonaise4, was gifted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the siege of its capital city Sarajevo (April 5, 1992 – February 29, 1996), probably by a French cultural institution or organisation. The donation consisted of several art books ranging from George Didi Huberman to Hubert Damisch, from Renaissance art to contemporary art. As I was a student of fine art, I would regularly look for these books in our library. It is by accident, and thanks to a war-time Sarajevo-siege related book that a person unknown to me chose to donate to my faculty, that I happened to discover Leach and Muneyoshi, or Soetsu as he was referred to in the French translation. I most probably chose the book because it was in French and it was about Japanese aesthetics, but it led to my discovery of the Mingei movement, or folk craft movement, in Japan, then eventually Okinawan pottery and Bingata, and finally Okinawa itself5. What marked my understanding of Muneyoshi and the Mingei movement (established in the 1920s) at the time was that Muneyoshi was key in preserving some local artisan techniques that would be revived after WWII in Okinawa.
The destruction that Okinawa and Okinawans experienced during WWII and the aftermath recovery were situations that as a Sarajevan I somehow identified with, and I decided to pursue my master’s degree in Okinawa6. I arrived in Naha aged 22, unable to speak more than a few words of Japanese, and besides understanding that Okinawa is part of Japan yet somehow different, what really stuck with me was the feeling of familiarity to the proximity, at least in terms of remembrance, of the memory of World War II. US military bases and personnel are a daily reminder that Okinawans are excluded physically and legally from accessing parts of their home islands. The violence to which Okinawans are directly and indirectly exposed by military occupation masks the beauty and complexity that is Okinawa7.
I hope that my work could help remedy such injustice, even if it is on a very small, personal scale.
The text was written in collaboration with Adna Muslija (2024).
1Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić, Untitled, from 'The Dancers' series, 2005.
2Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić, Untitled, from 'Tank' series, 2005.
3Said, Edward. Out of Place: A Memoir. London: Vintage, 2000.
4Adapted by Bernard Leach, translated into French by Mathilde Bellaigue. Paris: L’Asiathèque, 1992.
5Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić, Untitled, from the series 'Palm of the Hand Stories', 2008.
6Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić,"Finzi's" Drawing on paper, 60 x 80 cm, 2015. Photo: Dragana Antonić
7Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić,Untitled, from the 'Tank' series, 2009.
– r. 1980. u Sarajevu. Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić je vanredna profesorica na Akademiji likovnih umjetnosti Univerziteta u Sarajevu. Magistrirala je na Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts u Japanu te stekla MSc diplomu iz oblasti kulture i društva na LSE. Doktorirala je teoriju umjetnosti i medija na Univerzitetu umjetnosti u Beogradu. Bila je međunarodna istraživačka stipendistica Japanskog društva za promociju nauke na Fakultetu za studije politike Univerziteta Doshisha u Kyotu (2018–2020). Njena glavna istraživačka polja su politika sjećanja i identiteta na Balkanu i u Okinawi, isprepletenost roda i nasilja te materijalna kultura. Objavila je svoje radove u časopisima Third Text i Southeastern Europe.
Moj rad se nalazi na raskršću pisanja i crteža1. Ova dva dijela mog života nisu uvijek podjednako raspoređena u vremenu i pažnji. Ponekad provodim više vremena pišući, prepravljajući i uređujući tekstove koji ne moraju nužno imati veze s umjetnošću ili umjetničkom praksom. Pišem akademske radove i provodim etnografska istraživanja o temama koje me, iz različitih razloga, lično opsjedaju. To su nepravda, diskriminacija, nasilje, rod, sjećanje, vrijeme. Slične teme istražujem i u svojim crtežima, iako je rezultat, razumljivo, potpuno drugačiji.
Moj profesor crtanja na prvoj godini, Lucien Massaert, rekao je, ako se dobro sjećam, da radimo umjetnost onako kako neki ljudi idu na terapiju. Umjesto da započnem psihoanalizu, pokušavam sebi objasniti vlastito iskustvo i svijet koji me okružuje kroz pisanje i crtanje2. Baš kao što je moj rad podijeljen na dvije sfere (teoriju i praksu), tako je i moj identitet. Odrasla sam govoreći francuski. Danas sanjam, čitam i razmišljam na francuskom, ali to nije moj maternji jezik. Nedostaje mi francuski, kao da stalno osjećam da mi nedostaje dio mene same. Kao što je Edward Said pisao, većinu vremena osjećam se “izmješteno”3. Biti izvan mjesta ponekad je usamljeno, ali i obogaćujuće iskustvo. Omogućava mi ne samo da stvari sagledam iz različitih perspektiva, nego i da stalno ostanem radoznala prema svijetu. Vjerovatno sam se zbog toga odlučila studirati u Okinawi kada sam završavala dodiplomski studij u Sarajevu.
Prvi put sam se susrela s Okinawom kroz knjigu koju sam pročitala kao studentica u Sarajevu oko 1999. godine. To se dogodilo slučajno, uz pomoć Bernarda Leacha i Yanagija Muneyoshija. Knjiga Artisan et inconnu – La beauté dans l’esthétique japonaise4 bila je poklonjena Akademiji likovnih umjetnosti u Sarajevu tokom rata u Bosni i Hercegovini i opsade glavnog grada (5. april 1992 – 29. februar 1996), vjerovatno od strane neke francuske kulturne institucije ili organizacije. Donacija je uključivala nekoliko knjiga o umjetnosti, od Georgea Didija-Hubermana do Huberta Damischa, od renesansne do savremene umjetnosti. Kao studentica likovne umjetnosti, redovno sam pretraživala biblioteku u potrazi za tim knjigama. Slučajno, zahvaljujući knjizi povezanoj s ratnim Sarajevom, koju je neko nepoznat poklonio mom fakultetu, otkrila sam Leacha i Muneyoshija, ili Soetsua, kako se navodio u francuskom prijevodu. Vjerovatno sam izabrala tu knjigu jer je bila na francuskom i bavila se japanskom estetikom, ali me ona odvela do otkrića pokreta Mingei, narodnog zanatskog pokreta u Japanu, zatim do okinavske keramike i tehnike Bingata, a na kraju i same Okinawe5. Ono što mi je tada ostalo urezano iz Muneyoshijevog rada i pokreta Mingei (osnovanog 1920-ih) bilo je njegovo ključno zalaganje za očuvanje lokalnih zanatskih tehnika, koje su nakon Drugog svjetskog rata ponovo oživljene u Okinawi.
Uništenje koje su Okinawa i Okinawljani doživjeli tokom Drugog svjetskog rata i proces oporavka koji je uslijedio bile su situacije s kojima sam se, kao Sarajka, na neki način mogla poistovjetiti. Zato sam odlučila upisati magistarski studij u Okinawi6. U Nahu sam stigla sa 22 godine, ne govoreći japanski osim nekoliko osnovnih riječi. Osim što sam razumjela da je Okinawa dio Japana, ali istovremeno i nešto drugačije, ono što me zaista pogodilo bio je osjećaj bliskosti sjećanju na Drugi svjetski rat. Američke vojne baze i vojnici svakodnevni su podsjetnik da su Okinawljani fizički i pravno isključeni iz dijelova svojih vlastitih ostrva. Nasilje kojem su Okinawljani direktno i indirektno izloženi kroz vojnu okupaciju prikriva ljepotu i kompleksnost Okinawe7.
Nadam se da moj rad može doprinijeti ispravljanju takve nepravde, makar na vrlo maloj, ličnoj razini.
Tekst je napisan u konsultaciji s Adnom Muslija (2024).
1Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić, Bez naziva, iz serije 'Plesači', 2005.
2Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić, Bez naziva, iz serije 'Tenk', 2005.
3Said, Edward. Out of Place: A Memoir. London: Vintage, 2000.
4Prilagodila Bernard Leach, na francuski jezik prevela Mathilde Bellaigue. Paris: L’Asiathèque, 1992.
5Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić, Bez naziva, iz serije 'Priče na dlanu', 2008.
6Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić,"Finzijevo", crtež na papiru, 60 x 80 cm, 2015. Foto: Dragana Antonić
7Jasmina Gavrankapetanović-Redžić, Bez naziva, iz serije 'Tenk', 2009.
