Šejla Kamerić

Bosnian artist Šejla Kamerić explores the burdens passed down to women through generations and the possibility of breaking free from them and reclaiming one’s own story. Through photography, sculpture, installation, and sound, Kamerić examines memory, identity, and belonging, using her own body as a site of resistance and self-determination. The exhibition title refers both to personal experience and to the former Yugoslavia, or “ex-YU” – a place that has politically ceased to exist but continues to live on in cultural memory – asking what we carry with us from the past, what we are able to leave behind, and what remains.

Exploring Identity, Freedom, and the Politics of Belonging

Born in the former Yugoslavia, Kamerić’s life and artistic vision have been profoundly shaped by war and its aftermath. In EX YOU, personal history becomes intertwined with wider questions of gender, power, memory, and belonging. The title itself carries a double meaning: it evokes both ex-Yugoslavia and the experience of being “exed” – excluded from belonging, control, or even ownership of one’s own body and image.

At the heart of the exhibition is the female body and the narratives imposed upon it. Kamerić turns the gaze back on these expectations, questioning the roles, ideals, and inherited structures that continue to define what a woman should be. Using her own body and image, she transforms self-representation into an act of resistance – a way of reclaiming the right to decide how one is seen and who one is allowed to become.

Her works move between vulnerability and defiance, visibility and disappearance, the deeply personal and the collective. Rather than offering simple answers, EX YOU creates a space where identities remain in motion and where the past is not something left behind, but something that continues to shape the present.

Turning Personal Experience into Acts of Defiance

“This exhibition is deeply personal. Its about transition, freedom of choice, it’s about political, social and personal rejection. Identities are not simple and they are not fixed positions, identity is a process of becoming”, says Šejla Kamerić.

“Until I was a young teenager, I felt uncomfortable being a girl – I wanted to be a boy. I understood that boys had more freedom, and the path society built for a female child was not something I felt comfortable with. I recognized from an early age that it’s not something I fit into. Now I use my body and my voice as a woman to speak about that.”

Through this deeply personal starting point, Kamerić opens up questions that reach far beyond her own experience. What do we inherit from the generations before us? Who has the power to define our identity? And what happens when we begin to reject the roles and expectations handed to us?

EX YOU opens at Fotografiska Tallinn on the evening of 8 October with a special guided tour and will be open to the public with a regular museum ticket from 9 October 2026. The exhibition will be on view until 7 March 2027.

This exhibition is curated by Marina Paulenka, Independent Curator, on behalf of Fotografiska and produced by Jessica Jarl, Global Director of Exhibitions at Fotografiska and by Maarja Loorents, Director of Exhibtions at Fotografiska Tallinn.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Šejla Kamerić is an acclaimed visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans film, photography, installation, and drawing. Known for the poignant intimacy and sharp social commentary of her work, she brings personal histories into dialogue with larger political and historical narratives.

Questions of memory, identity, resistance, and the female experience run throughout Kamerić’s practice. Rather than treating history as something fixed or distant, she examines the ways it persists in everyday life – in bodies, relationships, cultural memory, and the stories people inherit and pass on. Empathy is central to her approach, allowing deeply personal experiences to become spaces for wider dialogue.

Her works are featured in major international collections, including Tate Modern (London), MACBA (Barcelona), Arter (Istanbul) and MMCA (Seoul). She has exhibited at prestigious institutions such as MUMOK (Vienna), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Portikus (Frankfurt am Main), Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.). Kamerić has also participated in Manifesta Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, and the Venice International Film Festival.

Among her many accolades, she received The ECF Routes Princess Margriet Award (2011), the DAAD-Berlin Artist Residency Fellowship (2007). Her films have screened at over 40 international film festivals, including Venice, Rotterdam, and Sarajevo.