In March 2023, Kuma International and the Austrian Cultural Forum Sarajevo supported the exhibition Labors of Care, presented at Manifesto Gallery in Sarajevo and opened on March 8, coinciding with International Women’s Day.
The exhibition brought together works by three artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina currently based in Vienna — Smirna Kulenović, Sanja Lasić, and Nataša Mackuljak — through a collaborative artistic research project exploring feminist histories, labor, care, resistance, and collective memory.
Positioned across different generations and migration experiences, the artists reflected on the role of women in Bosnia and Herzegovina, their contributions to society, and the social and political realities that have shaped their lives and artistic practices. While Sanja Lasić focused on traditional forms of women’s labor and visual heritage, Nataša Mackuljak examined women’s antifascist resistance during World War II in Yugoslavia. Smirna Kulenović’s work explored collective action, care, and solidarity in the aftermath of the Bosnian War.
The exhibition highlighted how questions of labor, migration, memory, and care continue to shape contemporary feminist artistic practices across generations and geographies, while creating dialogue between personal histories and broader political narratives.
As part of the program, artist Sanja Lasić also led the workshop Redrawing the Bosnian Ćilim. Together with local and international participants, the workshop explored women’s labor, ornament, and visual cultural heritage through the study of traditional Bosnian carpet-making practices.