Catalogue > At random

My Prisoner is a video work that reconstructs the event that occurred on 3 April 1994 in war-torn Bosnia by intermixing archival footage with contemporary reimagining of the occasion. It shows a young man being escorted by an army intelligence officer to visit his imprisoned father. As the men travel side-by-side in the back seat of a car Shine on You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd begins to play on the car radio. The young man acknowledges the music and tries to make conversation but the officer does not even recognize the track. A composite of autobiography, documentary and fiction, My Prisoner navigates through the space where the historical, the personal and the fictional simultaneously interfere with and enhance one another.

Velibor Božović grew up in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. When he was in his twenties, the country of his youth became a war zone and he spent the duration of the siege of Sarajevo honing his survival skills. In 1999, Velibor moved to Montréal where he worked, for eight years, as an engineer in aerospace industry until he gave up his engineering career to devote his time fully to art practice. Subsequently, Velibor completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in Studio Arts at Concordia University. He is the recipient of the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art (2015), Concordia International Mobility Award (2014), the Bourse de Maîtrise en Recherche from FRQSC - Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture Quebec (2012) and Roloff Beny Foundation Fellowship in Photography (2011). His work has been exhibited in the United States, Cuba, Canada, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. His images appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Descant, International Herald Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Granta, BH Dani and others.