In 2012, French artist Marianne Marić moved to Sarajevo for a residency. Though she no longer had any memory of the city, the country, the landscape, she did share a painful history with former Yugoslavia. She had wished to visit in order to confront her history, the history of her family, and, most particularly, the history of her sister Yéléna, who had died suddenly. Her loss created a silence that the artist wanted to break with photography, travel, and meetings.
In Bosnia, she met young women whom she photographed. In the beginning, they were women without heads, without identity. Today, faces appear, healing has begun. Marianne Marić combines women as an objects, marching (model, military, memory), and scars melting her history with that of this region traumatized by decades of dictatorship and fratricidal war. She photographs girls, architecture, nature, a city marred by violence (fallen shrapnel from the sky have made imprints resembling flowers that the habitants paint red, the Sarajevo Roses).
Here, Marianne Marić observes the traces of a violent passage on a country under reconstruction, all while searching for the foundations of her own history. Memories are fragmented, so it is about reconciling histories and beings, filling in the cracks by producing images. With this both an initiatory and liberating march, she faces her memories to create her own history which her images, marked by fragility, insolence, and innocence, now record.
Marianne Marić, Filles de l’Est
From November 21 through December 22, 2017
La Filature, Scène nationale
20 Allée Nathan Katz
68100 Mulhouse
France
