Our Family Garden is an ongoing series through which Smirna Kulenović questions the relationship between the post-war ecosystems and memory by creating collective organic monuments. These are situated as medicinal plant gardens co-created through a collective and citizen-inclusive performances and are made sustainable through the long-term collaboration between humans and plants. Kulenović’s complex artistic exploration of war trauma and post-war healing is presented via a screening of a collective Landscape Restoration in which 100 women* come together to plant 1000 medicinal calendula plants in the abandoned war trenches on the outskirts of Sarajevo (filmed in August 2021, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) to commemorate the dead soldiers, husbands, children, and brothers who were killed on the First Line of Defense during the siege of Sarajevo (1992–1995). Landscape is as important as humans, and calendula, a plant traditionally used to heal wounds, aims to reconstruct the microbiological life within the soil by attracting insects. In this way, the abandoned zone of the war trenches becomes a garden, curating a new, future-oriented behavior of citizens, promoting care and interspecies collaboration, as well as women-empowered futures. The film is followed by a Collective Interspecies Ritual with the participants of the Attuned Affects performative workshop and an artist talk.

#collective ritual #commemoration #women making future #trenches becoming garden

direction: Smirna Kulenović * camera: Tatjana Nikolic, Nedim Karalic, Fabricio Lamoncha * drone: Jasmin M. * editing: Smirna Kulenovic * supported by: KUMA International and the City of Sarajevo

© Ajla Salkić

With the support of Perform Europe as part of the East is Best project