selma banich
Milovanje (Caress)
selma banich is an artist, activist, community organizer, expressive art therapy practitioner, and SLC operator. Her artistic practice is explorative, process-driven, and rooted in activism, politically inspired by anarchism and feminism. Banich works independently and in collaboration with other artists, curators, communities, and initiatives across the Balkans. As a choreographer and performer, she has participated in numerous dance, theater, opera, and film productions. She is active in local and transnational solidarity initiatives connected to the ongoing feminist, anti-colonial, anti-fascist, migrant, and workers’ struggles, including Zagreb Solidarity City, Solidarityline Balkans, For BREAD, Strike for Gaza, and Unbowed Palestine. A recipient of several fellowships and accolades, including Akademie Schloss Solitude, MuseumsQuartier Artist-in-Residence Program, and the Nada Dimić Award with the Women to Women and Sloga collectives.
„As we are increasingly pushed into silence, obedience, and dissociation, through norms that subordinate us to structures of power, we choose touch. In Zagreb’s main square, a site where forces of power have met and clashed for generations, where politicians, athletes, entertainers, worshippers, and tourists take turns on the stage, we introduce an affective intervention. Sensation and touch take center stage as feminist acts of rebellion, resistance, and intimacy. Our lives are shaped by numerous asymmetries—of gender, class, race, and status—that violently dictate where and how we belong: at home, on the street, within the family, at work, in society. From this space, through tactile and sensory mobilization, we choose to embody defiance and pleasure. We are not here to endure. We are not here to disappear. We are here to be heard, to receive, to caress.“
courtesy selma banich
Format
Performance
Document media
Photography
Issue date
2024
To be seen in
re.act.feminism #4 - Archival Chain Reactions, MSUM, Ljubljana, 2026