Kuma International

💌 Last week of March, we had the pleasure of working on the collaborative programme Neighbourhoods. BiH × GER in partnership with the BridgeEast Project (Düsseldorf), bringing together local and international artists to explore and reflect on contemporary art from Bosnia and Herzegovina, memory, and cultural production in post-war contexts.

Over six days, we hosted lectures, studio visits, and city walks by Aline Cateux, Lejla Hodžić, Lejla Odobašić Novo, Aida Šehović, Nihad Kreševljaković, and Haris Šahačić and we were welcomed by Adna Muslija at .manifesto. We also spent one day in Srebrenica, visiting the Memorial Center, while creating space for participants’ own artistic contributions.
The programme was guided by Valeriya Boyko, Velibor Božović, and Claudia Zini.

We were grateful to work and exchange ideas in the beautiful and welcoming space of association.
We are deeply thankful to the BridgeEast Project for their trust, and to all participants for making this an intense and generous week, filled with curiosity, openness, and care. Special thanks to our guest speakers for sharing their knowledge with such sensitivity and respect for Sarajevo and the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

We’re especially happy that local participants Amna Hadžić, Milena Ivić, Haris Šahačić, and Denis Haračić will continue into the second phase of the project in fall 2026, culminating in a group exhibition in Düsseldorf.☺️

📷 As always, thank you Amina Hecimović for the beautiful photo documentation.

👏🏻Our founder and director Claudia Zini has been selected as an Allianz Foundation Fellow.

The Allianz Foundation Fellowship supports people working across art, research and civil society who are addressing the urgent challenges of our time and imagining new ways of responding to injustice and division.

“For the past decade, my work as an art historian, curator and researcher has been rooted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I founded Kuma International, a non-profit research and educational platform dedicated to the visual arts of post-conflict societies. Through research, exhibitions and educational programs, Kuma explores how artistic practices respond to war, genocide and trauma, and how culture can create spaces for dialogue, memory and long-term processes of healing.

This fellowship arrives at a very particular moment in my life, as I reflect on the past decade of work and try to understand where it might evolve from here. It offers something incredibly valuable: time and space to pause and think about how the methodologies developed through my work at Kuma might connect with other societies affected by war and displacement, and how these exchanges might contribute to new forms of dialogue, solidarity and shared understanding.

I feel honored to join this network of fellows across Europe and deeply grateful to for this trust.”

We are so proud of our 💛☺️

For the third year in a row, Kuma International was proud to partner with Radio Elsewheres, an online and terrestrial low-power digital radio-art project that explores movement and displacement—whether voluntary or forced—of human and non-human bodies, languages, ideas, recipes, botany, musical tuning systems, and stories. The project is conceptualized, produced, and curated by artists Velibor Božović and Steve Bates, together with Kuma’s founder Claudia Zini.

This year, we travelled to Windsor, Canada, for the radio’s third iteration. [re.03] broadcast live for three weeks, 24/7, from within Velibor’s exhibition Elsewhere, on Record at Art Windsor–Essex (curated by Emily McKibbon), bringing together more than 60 artists and contributors from around the world. Field recordings, eco-acoustics, radio essays, live transmissions, testimonies, and sound compositions wove together into a temporary shared acoustic space where radio and sound art met social engagement.

Radio Elsewheres has been creating environments where artists, storytellers, and listeners can reflect on movement, memory, and displacement through dialogue and sound. Each iteration listens across geographies marked by genocide, displacement, and colonial violence, carrying these memories into a shared practice of listening and solidarity beyond borders. These concerns lie at the heart of Kuma’s mission as well, making our collaboration with Radio Elsewheres a natural extension of our work with post-conflict art, lived memory, and communities shaped by forced movement.

Travelling with Radio Elsewheres since its beginnings in Bihać in 2023 has opened new ways of seeing and listening for us. Each iteration brings new conversations, new solidarities, and new insights into how art moves across places and communities. Working with sound has also opened new possibilities for Kuma, allowing us to explore listening as a form of knowledge and care; within Radio Elsewheres we have developed the Kuma Conversations series, inviting artists to share their stories, art practices, and reflections in response to the radio’s themes.

Working from Windsor, another border town like Bihać, offered Kuma a powerful new perspective. Experiencing the project from this context deepened our understanding of borders not only as lines of separation, but as spaces of listening, care, and transformation. It also marked an important step in Kuma’s ongoing effort to expand internationally and engage with places whose histories echo our own.

🔗 The Radio Elsewheres archive is available on the project’s website https://www.radioelsewheres.net/ 💛

Back in November, Kuma International was invited by Rete ONG ETS to curate the Autumn School of the Art for Change project in Torino — marking our first official collaboration in Italy.

From 17 to 20 November, at Fondazione Amendola, we led four days of workshops, screenings, and discussion dedicated to art, memory, and gender-based violence.

We worked together with Forme in Bilico APS — artist Irene Pittatore, trainer Isabelle Demangeat, and curator Lorena Tadorni — who presented the powerful project L’amavo troppo e le ho sparato. Photographer Fiorella Costantini shared Stories of Legacy, giving voice to Bosnian youth born after the war and offering a perspective of coexistence and future-building. As part of the programme, filmmaker Ado Hasanović presented his film My Father’s Diaries, opening a collective reflection on memory, responsibility, and inherited narratives.

The Autumn School addressed gender-based violence in its broadest sense, not only violence against women, but all forms of violence rooted in gendered power imbalances — through photography, film, and artistic research. Drawing on our long experience collecting and reworking, through art, the stories of survivors of violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina and other post war contexts, we aimed to show how every form of violence, whether against a community or an individual, begins with a mechanism of dehumanization that we can and must resist.

A heartfelt thank you to all participants, to Fondazione Amendola, and to our wonderful project partners.

ART FOR CHANGE was promoted by Rete ONG ETS, Forme in Bilico APS, and ASAI, in collaboration with Accademia Cirko Vertigo, Mamre, Maurice GLBTQ APS, UCI – Uniti per crescere insieme, and Kuma International, co-funded by the European Union and the Piedmont Region through the Connect for Global Changeprogramme promoted by Rete Ong

Photos: Fiorella Costantini

🎙️Our first podcast is online!

La Bosnia che non ti aspetti - Voci di viaggio tra memoria e bellezza is an Italian-language, field-recorded podcast created for the Scuola di Studi Superiori “Giacomo Leopardi” (dir. Prof. Carla Danani, Università di Macerata) by the students from Rete ASSI during the program Laboratorio Balcanico / Novecento tra storia, memorie e narrazioni that took place in the summer of 2025 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide — realized in collaboration with Roberta Biagiarelli / Babelia – Progetti culturali, Viaggi della Memoria / Istoreco – Reggio Emilia, and CultureLabs.

Following the training phase and field recordings, the editorial concept, editing, and post-production were developed by Kuma International — Claudia Zini, Haris Sahačić, Velibor Božović — with Atelier del Suono eTERITORIUM. Original music: Haris Sahačić.

🎧 Listen now [https://kumainternational.org/?p=1795]
📍 Voices, sounds, places: a weave of stories that reveals a Bosnia and Herzegovina of history, plurality, and shared beauty — recorded live in the sites of memory. A country that is plural, welcoming, surprising.

🙏 Special thanks to Prof.ssa Carla Danani, Roberta Biagiarelli for trusting us with this, and to the ASSI students for their collaboration and generosity in sharing their powerful reflections.

We were thrilled to spend an inspiring few days in Srebrenica (July 29–August 1, 2025) alongside 50 Italian students, immersing ourselves in the Laboratorio Balcanico / INCONTRI BALCANICI – Second Edition.

While half of the group teamed up with filmmaker Ado Hasanović to create a short film, the other half took part in the podcast workshop “La Bosnia che non ti aspetti,” led by Kuma International’s Claudia Zini, Velibor Božović and Haris Šahačić. Students learned to truly listen and recorded the city’s ambient sounds, their own impressions, thoughts and reflections, and some of the voices of local youth from the Sara Youth Association, offering a fresh perspective on today’s (and tomorrow’s) Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It was a genuine pleasure for Kuma International to work on its very first podcast alongside such engaged and creative young people. Now enters the post-production phase—tune in this October 2025 to listen!

This Journey of Memory and Solidarity was conceived by the Scuola di Studi Superiori “Giacomo Leopardi” – UniMC and the ASSI network in collaboration with Roberta Biagliarelli / Babelia & c. and Viaggi della Memoria / Istoreco, with technical support from CultureLabs eG.

Grazie mille! 💛

It was an honor for Kuma International to once again lead a successful Youth Exchange in Sarajevo, organized by UNFPA Bosnia and Herzegovina in collaboration with Embassy of Italy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and United Nations Peacebuilding 🙌🏻

Over four days of lectures, artist talks, studio and museum visits, and film screenings, Claudia Zini and Adela Kusur guided a group of 17 Italian students through Sarajevo’s rich artistic and cultural landscape, emphasizing the power of art and storytelling.

Together with guest artists Aida Šehović, Velibor Božović, and Adis Fejzić, they shared their passion for a city steeped in history and filled with people whose hearts are full of hope for the future.

Thank you, UNFPA, for your trust and continued support!