I met Hanna in her studio in the centre of Sarajevo. I wanted to see Hanna and the characters from her paintings in person. The worlds she lives in are already vividly represented in her paintings but, nevertheless, I wanted to come to that very room where everything is created, even for a moment.
Hanna looks like a fairy. She very much resembles the women in her paintings, she’s sophisticated and gentle, her soundless walk gives an impression of a dance, and her long tail does its own choreography if you look a little closer.
Her women are either asleep or awake with their eyes closed, they are enjoying themselves, they are dreaming, in their dreams they seem worried, but also blissful.
Hanna tells us a story about ourselves, about the worlds in which we strive to be authentic and happy. Light. Excited. Upset. United.
Next to her women there are friends, animals, fairy tale heroes who gently caress them, massage them, comb and scratch them like friends and sisters do. They are a part of our creative world. They seem to be a part of the magic we seek in tarot cards.
The scenes that appear to be a scenography in theatre, in which women are sleeping, moved me the most. For a moment, these women put their heads on their hands, with the breeze from the Mediterranean coming in through the open window.
They are the heroines from Scheherazade, from a fairy tale we read when we were little.
We know them all and recognize them in our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters, friends.
They hum as they ritually drink coffee from copper cups that look like gold. They cry and laugh. In colourful silk dresses, with hair ornaments, on carpets where generations used to sit and dream about freedom.
These are scenes that remind us of a dream about happiness. Of the decorative elegance we see in the work of Sandro Botticelli and the lucid phantasmagorical details of Hieronymus Bosch.
Hanna takes us to that place where we sometimes hide from everyone and curl up into our shell.
Thank you, Hanna, for this Ode about women as the most powerful Creation on the Earth.
