Guarding Lions, Sarajevo (ongoing)

Guarding Lions, Sarajevo, follows women* and men* from diverse backgrounds, depicting their struggle for feminist and queer equality in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Grethen offers a contemporary portrayal of activists, artists and people who, through their sexual orientation or gender identity, question the traditional patterns of gender distribution in the post-war society.

Focusing on Sarajevo this series paints a fantasy portrait of the Bosnian capital and claims an equal and universal right to the city (Henri Lefebvre). The images offer a safe space — an idealized and imaginary refuge, which does not yet find its translation into public space and reality, where dissimulation and gendered territories still reinforce patriarchal and heteronormative patterns.

Participation in such a project by the subjects then becomes an act of resistance: the camera reinstate the bodies, as spaces of struggle, within the city: photography becomes a political tool by making participants doubly visible (through the photograph itself and in the context of the city).
This work offers them a platform through which they choose to define themselves with their own words, as a way of self-determination.

Ehlimana Elma, a sister, a comrade, the president of Radićeva. The lead sister of Sestre, an audio visual project striving to advance the queer feminist cause and embrace their antifascist heritage.

Smirna: Burn me, arrest and discern me, sentence me to death. — A standing tribute to our sister and anti-fascist heroine Radojka Lakic. Tortured and murdered for her ideals, her mutilated monumental body reappears, the living resistance continues.

Matej, "I'm a son, a boyfriend, a friend, a feminist, a human being, a student, a worker, a queer [...]"

Sabina, "bisexual or also described as a confused cheater".

Elodie Grethen

Projects Tokyo Stories Guarding Lions, Sarajevo straight nose, queer mouth La beauté est dans la rue Traces The kids are alright Woman Ray 2018

Commercial work Portraits Dance & Performance Architecture & Exhibitions

About

︎ ︎

^Projects
Tokyo Stories
Guarding Lions, Sarajevo
straight nose, queer mouth
La beauté est dans la rue
Traces
The kids are alright
Woman Ray 2018

^{Commercial work}
Portraits
Dance & Performance
Architecture & Exhibitions