Edina Husanovic is a researcher, educator and a multimedia artist. Her interest in cultural politics and performance art practice led her to complete a PhD at the University of Reading in 2017. Her thesis ‘Dis-Orient Express: Belly Dancing, Hybrid Identities and Performances of the Oriental Feminine Other’ deconstructed the politics of the Oriental Other through analysis of belly dance performances in various European geographies, along the route of the Orient Express.
Echoing the same interest, her multimedia performance practice has often employed repetition and satire to subvert identity politics, which led to a review warning: ‘Orientalists will be disoriented and Disorientalists reoriented. Her mystical eyes are full of irony so beware!’ She explores the issues of memory, exile and personal history that stem from experiencing the Bosnian war as a young adult, to playfully subvert them in her multimedia art practice. Her work has been shown across UK and Europe in a range of venues, from the Brighton Fringe Festival to the Centre for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade.
She has held lecturing and educational support posts in the University of Arts London and the University of Reading since 2004. She has also organised academic conferences, exhibitions and research projects in Europe and UK, with project support from AHRC, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Council and the Arts Council. As an external consultant to the International Gallery of Portraiture in Bosnia, she established and ran a pioneering arts education programme for young people, in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Another project that she continues to organise and lead is ArtStory workshops which combine visual art and storytelling to engage people of all ages in a range of techniques of drawing and painting, while listening to stories from around the world.