Šejla Kamerić

2015 was marked by two extensive solo exhibitions, at ARTER Space for Art, Istanbul and the National Gallery of Kosovo, Pristina. In the same year, Kamerić’s highly ambitious project Ab uno disce omnes, commissioned by Wellcome Collection, was shown in London as part of the exhibition Forensics: The anatomy of crime.

Her first short film What Do I Know premiered in the Corto Cortissimo section of the Venice International Film Festival in 2007 and has been screened since in more than 40 international film festivals. The film was awarded with Best Short Film at the 5th Zagreb Film Festival in 2007 and Best Fiction Film at International Adana Film Festival in 2008. A collaborative film project 1395 Days Without Red, done with Anri Sala and Ari Benjamin Meyers and produced by ArtAngel premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2011. In the same year the film has been screened at the 17th Sarajevo Film Festival; MACBA, Barcelona and MSU - Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb. In 2015, Kamerić collaborated with Thai film director Anocha Suwichakornpong on a short film Thursday which premiered at the 44th International Film Festival Rotterdam 2015.

Šejla Kamerić's works have been included in numerous collection worldwide, such as TATE Modern, London; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris; MACBA – Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation, Vienna; Art Collection Telekom, Bonn; Vehbi Koç Foundation Contemporary Art Collection (2007+), Istanbul, permanent exhibition at the Memorial Center Potočari, Srebrenica and others.

Kamerić’s works have been on view in solo exhibitions at prestige art institutions such as Portkus in Frankfurt am Maine (2004); Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck (2008); mumok in Vienna, Röda Sten Centre for Contemporary Art and Culture in Gothenburg, Wip: Konsthall in Stockholm and Centre Pompidou in Paris (2010); Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Camera Austria in Graz, ArtAngel in London and MACBA, Barcelona (2011); MG+MSUM - Museum of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana, Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Kunsthaus Graz, Sharjah Art foundation - Sharjah Art Museum and CAC Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius (2012).

Dunja Blažević in the catalogue of the exhibition “In the Gorges of the Balkans”, Fridericianum Museum, Kassel, Germany, 2003 wrote:

Since then Kamerić has done numerous installations and interventions in public space: Closing The Border (2002); Bosnian Girl (2003); Pink Line vs. Green Line (2006); Ab uno disce omnes (2015), BFF (2015); SUMMERISNOTOVER (2014–2020).

Kamerić has participated in numerous group exhibitions: The Real, The Desperate, The Absolute, Forum Stadtpark, Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz, (2001); One Hundred Years of Contemporary Art of Bosnia and Herzegovina, National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo (2001); Prague Biennale; The Gorges of the Balkans, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2003); Passage d'Europe, Musée d'Art Moderne, Saint-Etienne (2004); Taboo / Tirana Biennale (2005); 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006); Tales of Time and Space, 1st Folkestone Triennial, Folkestone, (2008); Baltic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Szczecinie (2009); Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe, mumok in Vienna and Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warszaw (2010); Gwangju Biennale (2012); Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (2013); Hannah Ryggen Triennale, National Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Trondheim (2016); The Restless Earth, Nicola Trussardi Foundation and La Triennale di Milano (2017); The Warmth of Other Suns: Stories of Global Displacement, The Phillips Collection in partnership with the New museum, Washington, D.C.; 2nd Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art, Coventry; 4th Berliner Herbstsalon, Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin (2019).

In 1997, Kamerić exhibited her work for the first time at the annual exhibition organized by SCCA - Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art and curated by its director and renown art historian Dunja Blažević. In the following years, Kamerić worked closely with Blažević and continued to collaborate with SCCA. In this period Kamerić started to exhibit internationally. In 2000, she was invited to Manifesta III (entitled Borderline Syndrom) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. For this occasion, she made the installation EU/Others which received international acclaim and later became part of the TATE Modern collection.

Šejla Kamerić was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a child she lived in Dubai, where her father worked for several years as a volleyball coach. Her family returned to Sarajevo in the wake of the Yugoslav wars. When the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina started, Šejla Kamerić was just 16 years old with a successful career as a model for local and international fashion magazines and brands. She continued her modeling career during the early years of the war. During the Siege of Sarajevo, she graduated from the High School for Applied Arts, and enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts Sarajevo, graduating from the Graphic Design department after the war. Between 1994 and 1997, she worked with the design group Trio, group of young artists who (amongst other outstanding projects) designed a series of postcards Greetings from Sarajevo (1993) in order to draw international attention to the situation in the besieged Sarajevo. In 1997, she started to exhibit regularly in Sarajevo and internationally. During this period and until 2000, she was the art director of the advertising agency Fabrika. Since 2003 she was a member of the European Cultural Parliament. She was awarded with DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program Fellowship in 2007 and continued to live and work in Berlin as a freelance artist. In 2011, Kamerić received The ECF Routes Princess Margriet Award for Cultural Diversity. Today she lives and works between Sarajevo and Berlin.

Šejla Kamerić (born 1976) is a Bosnian visual artist.