LETTERS FROM POČITELJ IN CONTEMPORARY PICTURE
Author: Prof. Aida Abadžić-Hodžić, PhD, Faculty of Philosophy of University of Sarajevo • Illustration: A detail from Šemsa Gavrankapetanović's exhibition in Belgrade, 2020. Author: Aida Abadžić Hodžić
Begzada's letters to her children • Source: Archives of the Gavrankapetanović family
Artist Šemsa Gavrankapetanović (Sarajevo, 1945.) completed the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1968, in the class of professor Nedeljko Gvozdenović. She then completed postgraduate studies at the same Academy, in the class of professor Stojan Ćelić.
She wove part of her family history into her contemporary paintings. She printed the short, intimate letters which Begzada Gavrankapetanović, the wife of the last Počitelj captain, wrote to her sons in the early 20th century and which are kept in the family archives in the screen-printing technique and on the linoleum on canvasses, and then transferred them to her paintings in the form of embroidery. The letters on canvass are hung on a clothesline, like clothes that used to dry in sun-lit gardens and streets full of life in Počitelj.
In this refined homage to women's handiwork and intimacy of home, Šemsa Gavrankapetanović reminded of the role and position of the mother and the woman in preserving tradition, religion and literacy in the history of Bosnian Muslims, and developed an interesting, contemporary reading of tradition.
