Srebrenica to Host Coffee-Cup Memorial for Genocide Victims

Artist Aida Sehovic’s travelling memorial installation of masses of small traditional ceramic cups that are filled with Bosnian coffee for victims of the 1995 genocide will be set up in Srebrenica as the 25th anniversary is commemorated.

This post is also available in this language: Shqip Macedonian Bos/Hrv/Srp

Bosnian-American artist Aida Sehovic’s memorial project, entitled ‘STO TE NEMA’ (‘Where Have You Been’), will be set up for the first time at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre next week as part of commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the July 1995 massacres of Bosniaks.

Sehovic started the project in 2006 in Sarajevo when the Women of Srebrenica association brought along 923 cups, or fildzan in Bosnian, to create the memorial.

The number has grown at each of her annual memorial events, which have been held at the UN headquarters in New York and in Istanbul, Geneva, Toronto and Tuzla. At last year’s Venice Biennale there were 7,714 cups.

The UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague, where ‘STO TE NEMA’ was also displayed, determined the number of those killed in and around Srebrenica in July 1995 at around 8,000, but Bosniak officials and war victims’ associations say the number is higher.

There are 8,372 graves at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre and so far 6,610 victims have been identified and buried there so far. Several more identified victims are to be buried there next week.

The memorial installation is being organised in collaboration with the Post-Conflict Research Centre.

“When I started this in 2006, it was conceived as a one-off performance, something that would take place only once. That set-up in Sarajevo was also not interactive as only I filled the cups with coffee,” Sehovic told BIRN by phone from Srebrenica.

“Everything kind of fell in place and the circle has closed. The number of cups is now close to the number of victims and I was invited to come to Srebrenica on the 25th anniversary of the genocide,” she said.

Sehovic’s family fled the western Bosnian city of Banja Luka during the war when she was 15, and she now lives in New York.