Lecture with Selma Ćatović Hughes: Threads as Voices of Memory

To mark Human Rights Day 2025, QUB Human Rights Centre, Transitional Justice Cluster and Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice are delighted to host two events: this lecture with Selma Ćatović Hughes, and a film screening of My Father's Diaries in which, thirty years after the Srebrenica genocide, filmmaker Ado Hasanović delves into his father's incredible story by exploring his diaries and footage from those years. To register to attend the film screening please follow this link http://go.qub.ac.uk/q8kbc].

Both these events are part of a 3-day programme organised in collaboration with the Conflict Textiles Trust, QUB and Ulster University. Please see here for details https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/search-quilts2/fullevent1/?id=363 .

This lecture, 'Threads as Voices of Memory: Visual methodology for narrating trauma between body, site of memory, and tactile nature of (in)tangible narratives,' will explore how using visual methodology in meaning-making artistic practice can transform traumatic memory into narrative memory and facilitate a social platform for individual and collective healing, remembrance, and resilience. Transforming personal traumatic memories and utilizing creative frameworks, individual threads of memory are reassembled into a collective narrative that allows for documenting voices of the past and present and enabling public discourse about contested history, ongoing mass violence, and violations of human rights. Selma draws on her personal traumatic war-time experience from Bosnia and Herzegovina and ongoing investigation into human rights violations and oppressive regimes in other countries, such as South Africa, Chile, and Palestine. The shared principle of women as activists through daily vernacular activities has been visible and impactful around the world: the patchwork quilts from a small rural community of descendants of the black slaves in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, USA; the apartheid embroidery from South Africa; arpilleras, the traditional artwork of appliqué and embroidery narrating stories from the dictatorship in Chile; tatreez, the traditional embroidery in Palestine as a tool to fight systematic erasure and support resistance. With the focus on collaborative movements in textile art, a series of examples demonstrate social activism that is empowering and impactful, transcending geographical, ethnic and language borders.

Selma Ćatović Hughes biography

Selma Ćatović Hughes (b. 1977) grew up in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She holds Master in Architecture from UC Denver and BA in Architecture from the University of New Mexico. Her ongoing research about memory began as a subconscious form of therapy and her artistic practice of visual arts is a collection of individual and collective voices of memory. Selma has been an active participant in a number of conferences and academic writings that delve into issues of transitional justice accountability, difficult histories, and identity. As a recipient of several awards and research grants in collaboration with established institutions pursuing justice, peace, and sustainable future, she has been awarded the Paul Ré Peace Prize, the Lifetime Achievement Award for Historical Healing Through Art and her work ‘A Series of Tactile Memory’ was awarded Public Prize at the Biennal de Ceramica d’Esplugues, Spain. Currently Selma is a doctoral researcher in Cultural History at the University of Turku, Finland.