Hella Wiedmer-Newman studied Art History and Human Geography (BA) at the University of Toronto and History of Art (MA) at University College London. In 2017 she interned at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, working in cultural mediation. From 2021 to 2022 she was a research assistant at Kuma International Center for Visual Arts from Post-Conflict Societies in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her interests are in the areas of memory and museum studies, (visual) cultural studies, (geo)politics and critical theory. She has been a member of the eikones Graduate School since 2022.

Proxy Memory: Memorial Institutions in Bosnia-Herzegovina Between Mnemonic Paradigms

My dissertation focuses on visual memory cultures in Bosnia-Herzegovina against the backdrop of a political struggle to find a unified narrative of what happened during the Bosnian War of 1992-95. Specifically, I investigate the ways memorial institutions, such as the Historical Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Srebrenica Memorial Center, use contemporary artworks, exhibition practices and spaces to animate their histories. Further, by placing the case study of Bosnia-Herzegovina within a global context, I interrogate the notion of transcultural memory practices by analyzing what it means to import and export memorial ideology and aesthetics, as in the example of the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo and its satellite in Kyiv, Ukraine.