White Bee (2021 - )

In my grandmother’s house, I found a drawing of a family tree compiled by a distant relative in 1971. In a letter addressed to my great-grandfather, this relative explains the entire genealogy - the migration routes from Bosnia and Albania to Ceklin in Montenegro from the late fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth century, the blood ties between the recorded male names, and the final emergence of the family lineage to which I myself belong. Completely unexpectedly, the relative in the letter mentions the distant mother of all of our family fraternities, whose name and surname, unfortunately, remained unknown.

This archetype of the mother, the farthest recorded female ancestor, is called the white bee in the Serbian language and tradition. Much has not yet been clarified about this term, because even finding such a long family tree that mentions women is uncommon. However, it is believed that this foremother is called the white bee because she appears in the whiteness of the fog of memory and swarms like a bee in our consciousness, trying to wake us up and remind us she is still here.

Mine succeeded in that.

Her acknowledgment shed light on questions related to history and memory, and also to the treatment of female identities within the familial context. For me, the white bee reflects the neglected position of other women in the patriarchal form of ancestral tracking. That's why I decided to evoke my white bee's presence by translating it from the space between the written lines she appeared from and placing it in the space of the family history and memory to which she belongs.

*Part of the project was developed under the VID Foundation for Photography grant.