Utrecht Lokaal: Koštana Banović – Among Houses and the Cosmos

Koštana Banović (Sarajevo, 1960), winner of the 2023 Boellaard Prize, presents a selection of works in Utrecht Lokaal. Her films, drawings and objects provide insights into rituals and the human quest for meaning. 

For Banović, rituals form a bridge between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, like a sculpture in time. She investigates and documents communities and their cultural practices worldwide, sometimes following them for years. Although her working method calls to mind visual anthropology – the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and new media – rather than attempting a scholarly analysis of rituals, she focuses on the deeper, human layers of meaning. One of the ways she does this is to make the passing of time visible and tangible in her work.

Combining documentaries, fiction, personal experiences, poetic observations and cinematic experiments, Banović maps the human need to find meaningful patterns of existence. In recent years she has also focused on human rituals in relation to nature, with attention to urgent ecological issues.

The solo exhibition Among Houses and the Cosmos includes the experimental feature-length documentary of the same title, which Banović has been working on since 2016. It also features a selection of drawings, sculptures, artist’s books and two video installations, which together elucidate her long-term exploration of stories, rituals and encounters. Banović works around the world in countries such as Senegal, Brazil and her native Bosnia and Herzegovina, formerly part of Yugoslavia.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of a monograph with an overview of two decades of her work in partnership with Jap Sam Books.