I am... the mystical moonlight over Sarajevo
MELITA LENASI | Arts, Activism and Social Justice Summer School | Urban Word Collective | Global | Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
The night before I was awakened by the bright light of the full moon illuminating the buildings in my neighborhood. I have always been someone who is strongly affected by the changes of the moon. After that, I fell asleep dreaming of a powerful earthquake that collapsed the Center for Healthy Aging where I spend most of my time as an elderly person with my peers. That dream disturbed me greatly, so first thing in the morning I called my colleagues from the Center to see if they were okay and if the earthquake was true or a dream. The Center where I gather with my colleagues means a lot to me because there we engage in constructive and creative activities even in the old days. This full moon and the dream I had, which made me realize how much our Center means to me, gave me the inspiration for the picture I painted at the additional activity of the museum the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In October 2023, an exhibition was held on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dobrivoj Beljkašić, an artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina, who fled to Bristol in the early 1990s due to the war raging in Sarajevo and the rest of the country. The exhibition was realized in the art museum Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I often hang out with my peers at additional activities for us senior citizens. The museum educator who works with the museum audience organized an additional activity for us where we were guided through the exhibition "Painter of Restless Imagination, Dobrivoje Beljkašić, 1923-2023" with active participation in the discussion about the works. Through works in which the artist depicted the Sarajevo bridges, and the sacred architecture of this multi-ethnic city with a multi-layered cultural history, we talked about our upbringing in pre-war Sarajevo. For the creative task, we were given by the educator to illustrate the areas of the city, buildings, or people that symbolize our growing up in this city and the way in which the city, its environment, and people shaped our identity.
