Azra Aksamija

Shading installation, Wearable (2024)Commissioned by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation for the 2024 exhibition After Rain Produced with the Future Heritage Lab The “Abundance & Scarcity” project, presented at the Diriyah Biennale 2024, marries environmental sustainability with cultural heritage in the form of two components: an outdoor shading canopy and the “Bishty” wearable. This project embodies […]

Animation (2023)Commissioned by the Johanneum Museum for the Austrian state exhibition Diversity of Life: Showing Styria 2023Co-authored with Dietmar Offenhuber Navigating the Sky explores the relationship between sensory and scientific concepts of the celestial environment within the exhibition Diversity of Life, which features contributions from art, climate, and space research. The exhibition considers the Earth’s atmosphere, which has already been […]

Installation (2021)Commissioned for the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia 2021 “Silk Road Works” is a symbolic construction site for a pluralist society. The project deploys architectural storytelling to offer a border reflection on issues of migration, labor, and identity politics along the Silk Road in history and today. Three responses to the […]

Co-creation project, kissing mask design and multilingual instructions (2020) Co-MASK is a global collaborative project aimed at creating DIY fabric masks that promote hope, humanity, and hygiene practices in time of crisis. The Co-MASK is being developed by a global network of individuals who collaborate across borders to address a shared concern: to raise awareness […]

Exhibition design, immersive installation (2020)Commissioned by the Aga Khan Museum Toronto, with MIT Future Heritage Lab This immersive installation was developed for the “Sanctuary” exhibition at the Aga Khan Museum Toronto. The exhibition explores the notion of the safe haven, featuring 36 carpets created by notable international artists, including Mona Hatoum and Brendan Fernandes. Our […]

Digital drawing, print on recycled paper (2020)Commissioned by the Aga Khan Museum Toronto, with Future Heritage Lab This drawing explores the world through the lens of a cotton T-shirt, depicting three parallel narratives. The first story (green) traces the environmental footprint of T-shirts through the resources and the pollution that are part of its manufacturing […]

Modular textiles and pedagogy  (2019-)With MIT Future Heritage Lab Textile System for Experimental Research in Alternative Impact The T-Serai is a portable palace for transcultural futures. Inspired by textile histories of the MENA region, the project involves participatory creation of modular tapestries made of recycled clothes. The tapestries can be used to personalize the standardized […]

Participatory project, embroidery, sound, digital animation (2018) The Diaspora Scroll is a growing textile book that deconstructs myths of nationalism and local traditions through the embroidery patterns, which depict personal histories of migration, and the creation process, which facilitates transcultural exchange. The project takes the form through the sourcing, analysis of textile art, design, and […]

Public art installation, birdhouse (2019) Co-authored with Dietmar Offenhuber, within a sculpture park by Claudia Märzendorfer The project explores the colloquial connection between birds and psychiatric hospitals. Referencing the history of behaviorism, the project takes shape of the Skinner operant conditioning box* as a symbol of the dark age of psychiatry. In Skinner’s experiments, behavior […]

Participatory project, workshops, text, chocolate coins (2017-)International and multidisciplinary platform by Future Heritage Lab Code of Ethics? explores the intersection of aesthetics, ethics, and poetics in the humanitarian context. The project includes critical artistic investigations through participatory action research and transcultural workshops, offering a shared platform for dissemination of questions and critical reflections across cultural […]

Installation, single-channel animation (2017) Commissioned by the Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, SI Palimpsest of ’89 is an artistic installation exploring the role of Sarajevo’s cultural institutions in shaping the common heritage of Yugoslavia. The project was produced for The Heritage of 1989 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (Moderna galerija) Ljubljana, which reenacted the Second […]

Public space installation, participatory project series (2016) MIT 100 Anniversary of the Old Campus, Cambridge, MA The Memory Matrix is a temporary monument in the continuous process of building and dismantling. The project questions the ethics of preservation through experiments in future heritage creation, particularly in times of war. The piece deploys over 20,000 small […]

Special project at the Armory Show, New York, NY (2015) Artist journeys and encounters in a modified RV, events CULTURUNNERS is an artistic expedition in search of connections across borders. CULTURUNNERS at the Armory Show took place in front of the Armory Show’s entrance, where visitors could enter the RV to engage in personal conversations with […]

Two workshops, storytelling symposium, exhibition, public lecture (2014) MIT Program in Art, Culture, Technology, The Cube CULTURUNNERS is an artistic expedition in search of connections across borders (see general project description). Between October 1 and 6, 2014, the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) hosted a three-day creative workshop and a storytelling symposium […]

Wearable device, interactive performance, video (2014) Commissioned by Edge of Arabia, UK Yarn-dez-vous is a tactic cartography questioning what constitutes the geography of Middle Eastern and Islamic Art. The project takes the form of a wearable quilt featuring textiles from the MENA region and the United States. This fabric was chosen to map the identities, […]

Wearable device (2014) Commissioned by the Festival New Hamburg, German Theater, Hamburg, DE Wanderjahre #2 [Journeyman Years] is the second in a series of cultural mobility projects highlighting the immigrant as a transmitter of ornaments, knowledge, and skills. This site-specific installation produced for the festival New Hamburg organized by the German national theatre in Veddel, […]

Wearable device (2014) Commissioned by the Festival New Hamburg, German Theater, Hamburg, DE Wanderjahre #1 [Journeyman Years] speaks to cultural and political dimensions of labor migration, of which the post-war influx of Turkish migrants in Germany is a classic example. The hard hat references the heavy labor of the first generation of Turkish migrant workers, […]

24 Photographs (2014) The Spring Collection is a series of photographic self-portraits restaging the DIY helmets worn by protesters in Cairo during the Arab Spring revolution, in Ukraine, Turkey, and other nations that were undergoing radical political shifts during the previous five years. The project is a commentary on the activism in social media, where […]

Participatory project series, posters, workshops (2014-15) Commissioned by <rotor> Center for Contemporary Art Graz, AT Future Heritage Collection-Office speculates on how to decolonize the history of national museums. The project was aimed at raising awareness of the acute crisis that is afflicting the country’s cultural institutions and relating it to an understanding about politics of […]

Installation, video (2013) Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, SI The Future Heritage Collection [FHC] is a collection of stories produced through interviews with “experts” on varied subjects having to do with heritage, including Islamic manuscripts, Egyptian architecture, and the memory of the Holocaust. Interviewees are asked to propose an example of […]

Installation (2013) Commissioned by MAP/Dallas Holocaust Museum, Dallas, TX and Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, SI Museum Solidarity Lobby [MSL] is an interactive installation, framing a discursive space for thinking about the future of national museums in post-national societies. The project links the museum crisis in the Balkans to the closing of cultural institutions […]

Participatory project in public space, photography, censorship actions (2013) On October 4, 2012, after 124 years of existence, Bosnia’s National Museum closed down due to a funding crisis. Six other state-level institutions, including the National Art Gallery and the National and University Library, were also about to become permanently inaccessible to the public, isolating and […]

Textile installation (2013) Commissioned by the Vorarlberg Architecture Institute, Dornbirn, AT Lace Mashrabiya is an instantly recognizable assemblage of woodwork and window associated with Islamic architecture. This project reinterprets the mashrabiya motif to create a multi-sided experience for the spectator. Looking from the outside of the building toward the inside—that is, toward Mecca—the viewer can […]

Installation (2012) Commissioned by the Architectural Forum Upper-Austria (afo), Linz, AT Co-authored with Joel Lamere Unity Textile Muqarnas is a textile structure based on Islamic muqarnas, stalactite-like decorative three-dimensional elements found in Islamic monuments. The structure is hung from the neo-Gothic archway of the exhibition’s entrance. The modular structure of the muqarnas has been transformed […]

Installation (2012) Commissioned by Onomatopee, Eindhoven, NL This project gathers together a collection of anti-Muslim signs used by Islamophobic groups in Western Europe and appropriates them to create a multicultural response. The design of the signs evokes the system of isotypes used on public roads and transport systems. Against the essentialist grain of the isotype, […]

Mihrab installation, carpets, permanent structure (2012) Commissioned by the Municipality of Altach, AT The Shingle Mihrab (Prayer Space at the Islamic Cemetery, Altach) project includes the Qibla wall and carpets in the prayer space of the Islamic Cemetery Altach in Austria. The project symbolically connects different cultures in Vorarlberg through the combination of local materials […]

Tapestry, booklets, animation (2008/11) Commissioned by Stroom, The Hague, NL Monument in Waiting is a collective testimony to the eviction and mass murder of civilians from Bosnia-Herzegovina under the aegis of genocide and ethnic cleansing, as well as the extermination of their cultural and historical traces. Places of worship were particularly targeted, destroying the previous […]

The KUNSTMOSCHEE is an interactive installation located on the external grounds of the Secession from July 20th through September 30th, 2007. Thematically, it concerns the interrelationships between architecture, territorial and visual manifestations of religion, identity politics and cultural patterns of Western Europe today.

Wearable device, 12 photographs, video (2005) Commissioned by the ORTung/Cultural Department of Salzburg Government, AT Dirndlmoschee is the second project in wearable mosque series (see Nomadic Mosque project description below). The concept is based on assimilating cultural characteristics of a place into one’s own context. The Dirndl, a traditional Austrian dress, is still worn as […]

“Provocative Pole” installation, video, text-image plate (2002) Commissioned by the Generali Foundation Vienna, AT The project examines the new urban phenomena of the largest black market in the Balkans, the Arizona Market located near the city of Brčko. Arizona Road was the name given by the American military to the north-south highway in Bosnia and […]

Installation, photographs (2009) Commissioned by Stroom, The Hague, NL Skalamerija follows up on my 2002 project Arizona Road. Skalamerija is a contraption aimed at de-formalizing the Arizona Market’s current highly regulated spatial order, which has led to its recession. Ever since its regulation in 2002, the trade and urban development of the Arizona Market in […]

Participatory project in public space and at the Tate Gallery Liverpool (2004) Commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial, UK Bread and Games, Plant and Play investigates the interaction of formal and informal systems in the process of urban revitalization. It is meant to provoke a set of questions to which the community would find their own […]

Artistic journey across nine cities in the Western Balkans (2006) Collaborative participatory art and curatorial project The Lost Highway Expedition is a journey to explore the unknown future of Europe. In August 2006, over 200 artists, activists, and cultural workers embarked on a month-long joint travel along the federal highway formerly known as the Highway […]

Wearable device (2010) Commissioned by the Jewish Museum of Vienna, AT Co-authored with Dietmar Offenhuber Commissioned for the exhibition The Turks in Vienna at the Jewish Museum Vienna, the project Tempelmarke [Temple Tag] explores possibilities of activating history through the embodiment of memory. The exhibition explored the history of the Sephardic Jewish community of Vienna […]

Photograph, wall text, 7 designed souvenirs (2003) Commissioned by the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig, DE Fallen Angel explores the emergence of the war souvenirs produced by Bosnian craftspeople who transform artillery shells into vases. Unexpectedly, many people have found that these vases help them deal with their own personal war experiences, perhaps by transforming […]

10 photomontages (2005) Survival Mosque addresses the politics of visibility of Muslim minority groups living in the contemporary USA. The survival kit contains elements for self-protection such as the American-flag façade that communicates patriotism, gas-mask, nose filters, and an umbrella for protecting one’s back. The mosque is self-sufficient; the prayer rug supplies its own energy […]

Wearable device, 12 photographs, video (2005) Nomadic Mosque explores various ways of negotiating spatial relationships between Islamic traditions and modernity in the United States and Western Europe by creating wearable mosques, clothing that can be transformed into prayer rugs. While respecting religious restrictions, Nomadic Mosque aims to redefine traditional forms and functions of mosques in […]

Textile Installation (2008) Commissioned by Manifesta 7, Rovereto, IT Inspired by the geometric motifs of Islamic art, the Flocking Mosque juxtaposes these patterns with the five daily prayers of quotidien Muslim life. One “flower-circle” of this mosque can accommodate a prayer of twelve worshippers, by providing clean surfaces for those body parts that touch the […]

In different cultures and in different time periods, places of worship have been traditionally adorned with symbols of devotion; architectural ornament, sculpture and other decorative mediums were used to teach doctrine, as well as create places for prayer.

Video installation (2003) Commissioned by the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig, DE This project probes the impromptu survival economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The end of the communist era opened up a new and unexplored market for Western products. To question the way international capital in the post-Communist era operated as a mechanism of political and economic […]

8 Photomontages (2000) If any of the people who plan or rebuild contemporary cities would take the notion of “urbanity” seriously, they would consider the public urinal to be commonplace. However, today’s city planners prefer public toilets even though these are not used very often due to their lack of hygiene and security issues. This […]