Bio
Alija Kamber is a painter, photographer and musician, and has worked in all three all his life. He calls his own technique prekombinovana, recombined, mixing whatever comes to hand, with photography as the most everyday of his media. By his own account he works on around ten projects at once, in around ten techniques. The expression rests on a street-art sensibility: spontaneity, improvisation, a reading of the surface being worked. He names art history and nature as his most important teachers, and among painters singles out Joan Mitchell.
He founded the artists' group Manufaktura, ten women and men whom he describes as the founders of the Tuzla scene, and the group SCENA. He owns Grundilo, the first travelling gallery in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He describes himself as an artist without a career. He is connected across the independent scene of the region, Mikro Scena in Tuzla, the Sarajevo circle around Charlama and Brodac, Banja Luka, Mostar and its Street Art Fest, and in recent years has shown within Jusuf Hadžifejzović's Charlama circle.
Everything around me I turn into my toys.
Grundilo
The first travelling gallery in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Grundilo has no premises. Around three hundred framed works are kept in Kamber's flat in Tuzla; they are mounted for a few days at a time on the walls of host households and sold there, at prices between ten and a thousand convertible marks depending on format and technique.
It has been running since around 2015 and has stopped in Bihać, Mostar, Zenica, Sarajevo (BlackBOX), Tuzla and Banja Luka (Kordunaška 22), with Cuba, New York, India and Berlin in the wider account of it.
The founding premise is that an exhibition borrows the wall it hangs on and gives it back. That premise is the one the exhibition in Mijakovići proceeded from.
At Dvonoćje
Distant Relatives
Twelve photographs of the artist's parents, made daily through 2020 and 2021 from the balcony while they stood at the ground-floor window. Hung on the door of the wooden privy in the yard and on the logs of the outbuilding beside it. Opened 20 June 2026.
Prestolonasljednice · Original Kamber
An exhibition spanning centuries, shown in Mijakovići, and a first appearance under the name Original Kamber, an experimental musical performance made for Romantična noć.
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Exhibitions
Selected
- 2016Solo exhibitionArt klub · Kordunaška 22 · Banja Luka
- 2017Grundilo travelling galleryGalerija BlackBOX · Sarajevo
- 20209th Street Arts FestivalMurals · Mostar
- 2022Birds of spraywith D. Jovičić and B. Stapić · Atelje Ismet Mujezinović · Tuzla
- 2025Gomilariwith J. Hadžifejzović, A. Hodžić and others · Museum of Eastern Bosnia · Tuzla
- 2025Sleeping GuardsSelma Selman · as performer · Stedelijk Museum · Amsterdam
- 2025SubDokumenta Sarajevo '25Charlama Depot · Collegium Artisticum · Sarajevo
Works
Prestolonasljednice
Fourteen framed works, hung on the weathered boards of the outbuildings in Mijakovići. The siting is the same one the artist returned to the following year with Distant Relatives: pictures fixed to the wall a household already has, for as long as the household lends it.
MIDKAMBER
In the MIDKAMBER cycle Kamber treats Midjourney as a sophisticated brush in digital space, working to a principle of less rather than more against the algorithmic overproduction the tool invites. In one work he sets his own AI images inside old embroidery frames. The fullest account of the cycle is Lejla Osmanić's essay for Prometej.ba, 2025.
Travels
Havana and the Caribbean; Samarkand and Afghanistan, along the Silk Road; India. For years he has been collecting fragments of the destroyed monument at the Partisan Cemetery in Mostar, Bogdan Bogdanović's work. The subject is taken up in the podcast Kolektiv znanja, episode 72.
Photographs from the first edition
