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The Dr. Éva Kahán Foundation presents AWAKE by Šejla Kamerić, a site-specific sculptural installation at Kahán Art Space Buda in Budapest. Following its premiere at MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, the work will be reconfigured for the Foundation’s large-scale exhibition space in Buda, where it will remain on view for the duration of the exhibition beginning 28 May 2026. The venue is the Foundation’s Kahán Art Space Buda, 1116 Budapest, Gyapot utca 4, its large-scale exhibition space in Budapest’s XI district.

With AWAKE, Kamerić creates an environment that evokes a vigil: a space of shared reflection that resists certainty and fixed narratives. Composed of hundreds of red lanterns interspersed with small rotating emergency lights that activate at intervals, the installation unfolds as a fragile choreography of attention, memory, and interruption. Reimagined here as a sculpture for the interior architecture of Kahán Art Space Buda, the work invites visitors to move through an evolving constellation of light and alertness. At irregular moments, pulses of rotating light interrupt the stillness. These subtle yet insistent signals shift the rhythm of the encounter, introducing a quiet tension between contemplation and vigilance. What first appears ceremonial becomes unstable; what feels intimate becomes a shared condition. Through this interplay of stillness and disturbance, AWAKE reflects on how memory, emotion, and political urgency inhabit the same instant.

Working across disciplines and boundaries, Kamerić’s politically engaged practice explores collective vigilance and civic empathy in times of political crisis. Projects such as EU/Others (2000), Bosnian Girl (2003), and CEASE (2024) have repeatedly transformed public space into a site of reflection on shared responsibility. With AWAKE, she extends her long-standing exploration of identity, trauma, and memory into a sculptural environment that asks how we remain present, attentive, and ethically awake to one another.

AWAKE premiered at MuseumsQuartier Vienna, curated by Astrid Peterle, and is now presented in Budapest by the Dr. Éva Kahán Foundation at Kahán Art Space Buda, the Foundation’s large-scale exhibition venue.
Initiated by MuseumsQuartier Vienna and Nomad – The Croatian Office for Contemporary Art, Zagreb, and supported by the UNIQA SEE FUTURE Foundation and the Dr. Éva Kahán Foundation.

Curated by Vanja Žanko

Information
AWAKE by Šejla Kamerić
Opening: 28 May 2026
Venue: Kahán Art Space Buda
Address: Gyapot utca 4, 1116 Budapest, Hungary

Installation view of Perfect Tense, Cukrarna, Ljubljana
Photo: Blaž Gutman