Exhibitions NOW

Contemporary Art Listings The Hague

Tag: Arna Mačkić

  • Talk: Cups of Memory conversations at Kunstmuseum Den Haag

    Talk: Cups of Memory conversations at Kunstmuseum Den Haag

    Which traumatic events from the past do we commemorate as a society? And how does a community build a monument for an act of genocide that some would prefer to have wiped from our memories?

    On 11 July 2025 it will be exactly 30 years since the genocide in Srebrenica took place. In Cups of Memory architect Arna Mačkić (Studio L A) and artist Aida Šehović (ŠTO TE NEMA), both survivors of the Bosnian War (1992-1995), present a new interpretation of remembrance.

    Cups of Memory Conversations delves deeper into the questions raised by the exhibition. Director Margriet Schavemaker will speak with Mačkić and Šehović about their work. In addition, several guests will join the conversation, including cultural historian and co-founder of Sites of Memory Jennifer Tosch, and former Chief Government Architect Floris Alkemade.

    What: Cups of Memory Conversations
    Where: Aula, Kunstmuseum Den Haag and KM21
    When: Saturday 8 November, 14:30 hrs – 17:00 hrs
    Ticket: €7.50, including entry to KM21 and a drink at Gember

    A detailed programme will follow.

  • Cups of Memory at KM21

    Cups of Memory at KM21

    building monuments through rituals

    A horrific tragedy unfolded in the area of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 11 July 1995, when the Bosnian-Serb army murdered more than 8,372 Muslim men and boys. The UN Dutchbat battalion, which was charged with protecting them, did not intervene. It was the biggest act of genocide in Europe since the Second World War. Yet, thirty years on, this event is still not part of the Dutch collective memory and remains absent from the national culture of remembrance.

    Cups of Memory by architect Arna Mačkić (Studio L A) and artist Aida Šehović (ŠTO TE NEMA), both survivors of the Bosnian War (1992-1995), presents a new interpretation of remembrance, in which art, collective memory and shared rituals not only reflect on the past, but confront its long-term consequences that continue to shape our present.

    It is based on the art project ŠTO TE NEMA (‘Why are you not here?’), a participatory monument of remembrance presented on city squares around the world. Aida Šehović initiated ŠTO TE NEMA on 11 July 2006 with a public performance in Sarajevo, for which a local women’s organisation collected the first 923 fildžani, traditional coffee cups. Šehović placed the porcelain cups in the street. Volunteers invited passers-by to help fill them with Bosnian coffee, which remained untouched. This silent but powerful act of remembrance was repeated every year on public squares across the globe: from Geneva to New York and from Istanbul to Toronto. There is now a fildžan for each of the victims.

    In Cups of Memory, Mačkić and Šehović reconstitute the temporary monument, surrounded by images and stories of survivors and descendants, witnesses and collaborators, providing a place for reflection, hope and a collective quest for a world free of genocide.