03-Feb-2022
Representing the Self, Improperly
This text traces the multi-faceted meanings of the Šejla Kamerić’s artwork Bosnian Girl by asking how a stereotype can be taken up and turned on itself. I explain how Orientalism and Balkanism are ideological discourses that are coded into the work’s original graffiti text. I subsequently demonstrate how the piece performs an intervention into these dominant meanings by showing how trans-coding, mimesis, embodiment and the strategy of ‘the eternal return’ is used to disavow the charged meaning in the original message. Keywords: representation, mimesis, feminist art, Orientalism, Balkanism, cultural studies