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Difficult Exhibitions in Difficult Sites: An Investigation of Exhibition Design Practice for The Rescuers in Bosnia and Herzegovina

2015; Routledge; Volume: 18; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14606925.2015.1054208

1756-3062

Willhemina E. Wahlin, Leora Kahn,

Art Education and Development

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. Picturing Moral Courage: The Rescuers was the title for the exhibit when it opened in Sarajevo in 2011, as well in other places it has been shown internationally. For the remainder of its time in the Balkans, The Rescuers went under the title Ordinary Heroes. In this paper, the exhibit will be referred to as The Rescuers. The exhibition was developed by PROOF: Media for Social Justice, a non-profit organization based in New York. PROOF uses visual storytelling for genocide prevention and peacebuilding. The local partner organization, the Post-Conflict Research Centre (PCRC), assisted with the collection of testimony across the Balkan region and was responsible for touring the exhibition.2. The ‘other’ as Stuart Hall (Citation1997) explains, is the perception of difference that is often cultivated through representation: differences in race, gender, sexuality and even economic status can be conveyed through visual as well as literary communication. These representations can have a very real effect on the ways in which members of a society interact with one another.3. PROOF’s curator (Kahn) and designer (Wahlin) have also produced an English-language version of The Rescuers, which has travelled to several universities, museums and libraries across the United States, including Yale, the University of Massachusetts, at the International Conference on Transitional Justice, Geneva, Switzerland, and the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne, Australia. They also produced a Khmer/English version that has been travelling across Cambodia since 2011. Another version of The Rescuers was designed and displayed by the Holocaust Museum, Houston in 2014, and a further version was designed by the Kigali Memorial Center in Rwanda.4. English–Bosnian translations were undertaken by PROOF’s local partner, the PCRC, as were the decisions related to the languages displayed.5. ‘Rescuers’ are defined as those individuals who saved the lives of someone in their enemy group at risk to themselves, and sometimes, their families as well.6. Interview with Velma Šarić, Willhemina Wahlin, June 2014.7. For example, see Krajišnik, Citation2012).8. This survey information is a preliminary finding of the work still currently being undertaken by Dr Sabina Cehajic-Clancy from the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, BIH. More details relating to this survey will become available when published by Dr Cehajic-Clancy.9. Text from the introduction panel of The Rescuers (PROOF: Media for Social Justice).10. Kincehloe argues for a bricolage approach to qualitative research in order to achieve a multiperspectivism, claiming that theory development and method choice is an important foundation for gaining knowledge in complex social, cultural, psychological and educational domains.11. For example, see Alpers, Citation1991.12. See de Saussure, Citation2005.13. ‘Framing’ refers to pictorial framing devices that can connect or disconnect visual elements. It can refer to what is within the frame and also what is inferred to be outside it. Framing can contribute in many other ways to meaning potential: the lines of a frame, empty space, and discontinuities can all play a role. Segregation, as the term suggests, draws our attention to the divisions between modes. Proximity encourages us to examine the closeness of the relationship between modes and can reveal what impact they have on each other in the meaning-making process, while modality is the social semiotic term relating to notions of truth (high or low modality) (van Leeuwen, Citation2005).14. The IRC frames consisted of three pods of frames, making up a total of 20 frames. Each frame included a large and small panel, the latter of which was tilted up at a 45-degree angle. At the last minute, a lighter and more robust framework based on IRC’s model was fabricated locally, in order to address the problems associated with travelling such a bulky system. However, the exhibition designer had no knowledge of this change, and as the new fabrication saw the removal of the upward angle of the small panel, the typographic design of the lower panel was done based on the IRC framework.15. Adobe Caslon Pro, designed by Carol Twombly in 1990, is based on Caslon, designed by William Caslon in 1725.16. Colour was a useful semiotic resource employed across the exhibition. For example, gold was used to connect the overarching narrative of the exhibit through title branding, organizational and introductory text and the base colour for the map graphic. Regions of rescuer origin were given their own colour on the map graphic, with this colour connecting it to the Bosnian version of text relating to the background of the conflicts and the biographies of the photographers that worked in each region. Across the entire exhibition, the English-language sections were set in white.Additional informationNotes on contributorsWillhemina WahlinWillhemina Wahlin is a Lecturer in Graphic Design at Charles Sturt University, Australia, where she is also a PhD Candidate. Her research focuses on the design of typographic information for exhibitions that deal with ‘difficult’ knowledge and social justice issues, with a particular emphasis on representations of testimony. She has been designing exhibitions for PROOF: Media for Social Justice, where she is Creative Director, since 2009, and was the designer for The Rescuers.Leora KahnLeora Kahn is the Executive Director of PROOF: Media for Social Justice. She has curated multiple international exhibitions, including Child Soldiers, with the UN’s Office on Children and Armed Conflict, Darfur: Photojournalists Respond, and The Legacy of Rape, and Picturing Moral Courage: The Rescuers. Leora has been a fellow in the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, where she conducts research on rescuers. She is the curator for The Rescuers exhibition.