The United Nations General Assembly, through Resolution 78/282, adopted on 23 May 2024, declared 11 July as the International Day of Remembrance of the Srebrenica Genocide, emphasising the importance of remembrance and education as tools for raising awareness, combating the denial of this tragedy and preventing crimes of this nature from ever happening again. Around this date, the Museum of Contemporary Art Ars Aevi in Sarajevo is inviting museums around the world to take part in this commemoration by exhibiting the photograph “Mother of Srebrenica”, taken in 2001 by the artist Almin Zrno. It is an image of great symbolic power, encapsulating silence, grief and dignity; a work that invites introspection and compassion, and bears witness to horrors that defy description, becoming a symbol of pain.
The display of this photograph alongside the oil painting “Montserrat criant n.º 2” by the artist Julio González, painted between 1936 and 1940, reveals a striking affinity between the two compositions. Through the figure of a Catalan peasant woman, whom he named Montserrat, Julio González depicts the suffering of the civilian population during the Spanish Civil War.
The two images share the same expressive power: almost the same woman, a universal mother, with a scarf tied beneath her chin; her mouth open or closed in a muffled cry; her eyes closed; her face furrowed by deep wrinkles that bear witness to extreme pain. The cry cannot be heard, but it is clearly sensed. Both works were conceived within the same context of war, several decades apart, granting art not only the potential for aesthetic enjoyment, but also the capacity to serve as a testimony and an act of resistance against oblivion.
