Art project on the genocide in Srebrenica: Cups of Remembrance
Silently, visitors carry cup after cup onto the metal shelves, carefully placing them side by side. They are small, handleless porcelain cups, some plain and white, others colorfully patterned; their shape is always the same. They are the cups of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide 30 years ago.
Commemorating the Srebrenica genocide is the life's work of Bosnian-American artist Aida Sehovic. In May 2025, she presented her installation "Sto te Nema," Bosnian for "Where Have You Been," in Munich's old Carmelite Church, now used as an exhibition space, as part of the "AusArten - Changing Perspectives Through Art" festival.
Thirty years ago, over 8,000 Muslim boys and men were murdered in Srebrenica. Although the UN had declared Srebrenica, a small town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina , a safe zone, Dutch peacekeepers surrendered the safe zone to the Bosnian Serb fighters under General Ratko Mladic without a fight. In 2007, the International Court of Justice in The Hague classified the events as genocide. In 2024, the United Nations General Assembly declared July 11 as the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Srebrenica Genocide . Serbia and the predominantly Serb Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina deny to this day that genocide took place in Srebrenica.
A cup for each victimSehovic has collected over 8,000 cups. Born in Banja Luka in 1977, she and her family were able to escape to the United States in time after the outbreak of the Bosnian War in 1992. Sehovic graduated from high school in the USA and studied art at the University of Vermont. The family's escape and the events in her Bosnian homeland have still haunted her. She asked friends and relatives in Bosnia and Herzegovina to donate cups to her in memory of the victims.
The small porcelain cups evoke the ritual of communal coffee drinking, central to Bosnian culture. "We never drink coffee in these cups alone at our laptops," the artist explained to the audience in May at the Carmelite Church. "Drinking coffee together is a time for exchange and conversation." Some cups were used by the victims of the genocide themselves, others were collected by friends and relatives and given to the artist. She has now collected more than 8,372 cups in this way. 8,372 is also the official number of known victims of Srebrenica. The surplus cups represent those victims who were not included in the official statistics but are still missing.
How can we remember? This is the central question that drives the artist. Since 2006, Aida Sehovic has been on the road, presenting "Sto te Nema" as a traveling project around the world. She has been to Stockholm, Istanbul, Chicago, Venice, and Geneva. In a public performance every year on July 11, she and volunteers from the Bosnian community set up the cups at these locations and filled each one with coffee. They left the coffee unsweetened and undrunk as a sign of remembrance.
Performance at the site of the genocide"I started with 923 cups," says Sehovic, "and then it grew." At first, she placed and filled the cups herself, but later volunteers took over. In 2020, she had as many cups as there were victims and held her performance directly at the site of the genocide, in Srebrenica. Sehovic placed the cups exactly where, 30 years ago, the boys and men had been separated from the women and girls before they were murdered. Many families saw each other there for the last time. Relatives of the victims attended Sehovic's performance in Srebrenica.
"As soon as we touch a cup, we are connected to the story of the victims," says Sehovic. "That's something completely different than just reading about Srebrenica on a screen." In a time when a lack of empathy is palpable, she believes this direct physical contact is particularly important. Today, people are having fewer and fewer direct experiences with others or with nature. At the same time, they are inundated with images of violence in movies and on the news. "Direct experience, on the other hand, has something of a ritual; it can connect people and thus contribute to healing."
Symbols of humanityOf course, it's important to document atrocities, says Sehovic, "but I don't believe in the effectiveness of brutal images." Therefore, she decided not to work with photographs or other artifacts that directly depict the cruelty of what happened in Srebrenica. The coffee cups, on the other hand, represent encounters; they are a symbol of humanity.
After the performance in Srebrenica, Sehovic says something changed for her. The artist is now working on consolidating the project and transforming it from a nomadic monument into a permanent one.
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