The exhibition “Bogujevci/Visual Stories” is composed of four installations; “The living room”, “The family tree”, “The hospital room” and “The judgment room” where one watches original film footage, interviews, photographs and personal items
TIRANA, Feb. 13 – Fatos, Jehona and Saranda Bogujevci are three members of the Bogujevci family who survived a Serb army massacre in March 1999, in the town of Podujeva, in Kosova. Ever since that day, they have been on a long journey of recovery, and search for justice. Today, Fatos, Jehona and Saranda Bogujevci are the artists of an exhibition, who in a very original way recreate the drama they went through, the slow recovery process and their lengthy search for justice after the tragedy of the family.
The exhibition “Bogujevci/Visual Stories” is composed of four installations; “The living room”, “The family tree”, “The hospital room” and “The judgment room” where one watches original film footage, interviews, photographs and personal items. The exhibition, apart from its documentary character, can also be seen as an artistic answer to brutality and violence, and as a virtuous response of the human soul against war crimes, organizers say.
“Our goal is to remind people what happened in Kosovo, and make them aware that we shouldn’t forget the war so easily. Our aim in Albania is to inform citizens in Tirana and all over Albania what exactly happened to common households in Kosovo so that this does not only remain media information, but kind of interaction with artists and somebody who was part of the tragedy in Kosovo,” says Fatos, a survivor of the Bogujevcis.
His sister Saranda says “what happened will never be forgotten, but we have found ways of confronting it, live on and look forward.”
Inaugurated on Feb. 10, the exhibition will remain open to the public until 2 March 2012.
Survivors’ story
On the 28 of March 1999 during the war in Kosova, in a brutal act of murder, 21 members of the Bogujevci family and friends, all women and children (including children as young as two years old) were forced into a garden and machine gunned down. Only five of them survived. “We lost our mothers, grandmother, brothers, sister, cousins and other members of our family and friends.
After the war in September 1999, with our fathers – the remaining members of our family – we were medically evacuated to Manchester. Evacuation was due to the injuries sustained as children during the war,” say Fatos, Jehona dhe Saranda Bogujevci
“In 2003 and 2008 we testified in Belgrade against five men who shot our family. We were the first Kosovar Albanians who testified in a war crimes trial after the war in Kosova as well as the first children to testify in any war crimes trial with the accused being presentThe exhibition was first displayed last October at the National Gallery in Kosova.”
“This exhibition is an artistic and visual response, an exploration of this terrible crime and of the impact it has had on our lives. Through the exhibition we hope to continue the debate regarding the reality of Kosova during and after the war. We hope this inspires other families and organisations in Kosova and the region to tell their own stories.”
The exhibition also documents our physical recovery, our fight for justice and expresses our need to raise awareness of this horrific injustice to the wider international community. Our aim is also to take the exhibition to Belgrade, Sarajevo, other parts of the Balkans, and to the UK, as well as to other parts of Europe and USA, the artists conclude.
