Kontrapunkt’s symposium is dedicated to the understanding of feminist practices and strategies in contemporary art and especially the one that is generated in the space of the Balkans.

The friendly collaboration between CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture, Festival for Feminist Culture and Action – FIRSTBORN GIRL and the artist Šejla Kamerić continued after previous 2022 exhibition “We come with a bow”, which CRIC festival, feminist festival Firstborn girl and Kamerić presented in the National Gallery, Cifte Amam. In 2023 year we had the honor to present the art book “Mother is a bitch” authored by Šejla Kamerić and friends – for Kamerić, the most important thing is the weaving of friendship networks and narratives that create an atmosphere of protection and mutual support.

The symposium included the book presentation talk with Kamerić.

The book Mother is a Bitch brings together texts and images that reflect on Kamerić’s multifaceted practice following two main lines within her body of work: self-portraits and textile works. These artworks are based on Kamerić’s own experiences, memories and dreams and take us to global spaces of displacement and discrimination. They are viewed through the lenses of gender, labor, migration, class, and care, imbued with interweaving temporalities—past and present.

Mother is a bitch is inspired by Hélène Cixous’ écriture feminine or“women’s writing”—a theory of feminist philosophy that combines elements of psychoanalysis, literary theory, and deconstructivism, the authors of the publication consider acts of writing asa subversion of patriarchal orders. The commissioned texts are juxtaposed with one another and with reproductions of Kamerić’s works, negotiating themes such as witchcraft, feminism, self-reflection, self-exploration, and self-exploitation