The­re are no pho­to­gra­phs from the year my sisters, eight and ten at the time, fled Sara­je­vo at the begin­ning of the Bosnian War. What remains is a dia­ry, writ­ten by my elde­st sister. She wro­te throu­ghout their displa­ce­ment, and her wri­ting beca­me the only testi­mo­ny in our fami­ly archi­ve that speaks of a time I did not wit­ness but which I have come to know throu­gh her words and the sto­ries pas­sed down within our fami­ly – a time that has dee­ply impac­ted the cour­se of our lives and con­ti­nues to sha­pe my sen­se of fami­ly, iden­ti­ty, and belon­ging.

The dia­ry covers a period from spring 1992 to win­ter 1993, during which they moved throu­gh seve­ral tem­po­ra­ry homes across Croa­tia befo­re even­tual­ly set­tling in Zagreb. In Dear Orchid, I revi­sit the­se pla­ces with my other sister and our father. Using the dia­ry as a gui­de, we retra­ced their jour­ney from Sara­je­vo to Hvar and Jel­sa, final­ly set­tling in Zagreb. We revi­si­ted land­sca­pes that car­ried the memo­ry of their displa­ce­ment. This jour­ney for­med the foun­da­tion of Dear Orchid, a body of work com­pri­sing a series of pho­to­gra­phs, an 18-minu­te film and a publi­ca­tion.

This act of return – per­so­nal, poli­ti­cal, and embo­died – asks how the post­war gene­ra­tion might car­ry its inhe­ri­tan­ce with care and respon­si­bi­li­ty. Enga­ging with the archi­ve means enga­ging with histo­ry not as the past, but as an acti­ve struc­tu­re tran­smit­ted and embed­ded in the pre­sent and car­ried throu­gh gene­ra­tions of siste­rhood. Like grief, the archi­ve demands to be held, as some­thing unfi­ni­shed, unre­sol­ved, and still urgen­tly ali­ve.