Mississippi Valley Textile Museum
Almonte, Ontario
October 26—
December 21, 2013

The long-term effects of war on people’s personal lives are difficult to envision for those of us who have never experienced its violence. I try to imagine it as a pin-prick hole in a tiny vein that refuses to heal. It leaves drops of blood forming a red line that becomes entangled in each and every endeavour of a war’s victim. The strands of red yarn in Bozica Radjenovic’s sculptural installations and performances and the red lines of her drawings planted this image in my mind.

Radjenovic was born in Belgrade, Serbia. She had just graduated as a sculptor with an MFA from the University of Arts in Belgrade and was actively exhibiting and achieving critical attention for her work, when the Yugoslav civil war broke out in 1991. Two years later she moved to Canada. From this powerless but safe distance, she watched the war go on for years and finally play itself out in 1999. All that time, the brutal way in which her life had come apart, rendered her mute in her chosen profession. In Serbia, she had been exhibiting her rough-hewn wooden figures. In Canada, at the end of the nineties, some similar sculptures began to appear again, now with rope and twine strung through and around the wood. The string inspired the artist to consider knitting as a viable method for making sculpture. Not only could

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