Lana Čmajčanin

Lana Čmajčanin's project follows the red thread of women’s individual and collective experiences of war violence, tracing the gray zones of national borders that were inscribed by all brutal reversals throughout the history of the Balkans, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Yugoslavia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Within these national entities, the brutal treatment of women’s bodies defined the everyday lives of all their peoples as well as the politics of living in the liminal space of resisting, creating and becoming. The project is devoted to exploring and interrogating colonial and imperial abuse of women’s bodies to critically analyze the strategic use of sexual violence in warfare. In particular, Čmajčanin explores the reasons for and methods of the war rapes, and how these overlap and intersect with the historical construction of conquered territories, as well as examining the oppressive forces that continue to perpetuate gender-based violence today.