Azra Akšamija’s Palimpsests of ’89 (2017), a 20-minute single-channel digital animation, is now on view at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco as part of RugLife, a group exhibition running from December 14, 2024, through April 20, 2025. Guest curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox of c2-curatorsquared, RugLife brings together 14 international artists who use the form of the rug to address issues such as social justice, housing, environment, identity, and memory. With rugs historically tied to ritual, domesticity, and symbolic space, the exhibition explores how contemporary artists activate this medium as both art object and cultural critique.
Palimpsests of ’89 contributes to this discourse by visualizing how Sarajevo’s cultural and religious institutions have shaped the common heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Conceived as a “digital palimpsestual carpet,” the animation traces the weaving of integrative and disintegrative narratives across Sarajevo’s history—from the Pre-Ottoman era to the Post-Dayton Peace Agreement—revealing how common heritage is constantly redefined. As symbols accumulate across the animated textile, the work reflects the fragility and resilience of collective memory in the face of crisis. The piece transforms carpet iconography into a storytelling device that reclaims history as a dynamic, contested, and participatory process.