Support for Smirna - devastated belongings, artworks and years of research

Smirna Soraya Kulenovic is a Bosnian-born transdisciplinary artist, researcher, filmmaker, and educator whose work explores ritual, memory, ancestral knowledge, ecology, and collective healing. 

In 2025, she relocated to Portugal, bringing with her the entirety of her life’s work: artworks, research archives, film materials, personal belongings, tools.

In the last days of January 2026, a powerful hurricane struck central Portugal, hitting the area around Alcácer do Sal particularly hard. Homes were devastated, infrastructure collapsed, and severe flooding followed. As a result, approximately 80% of Smirna’s decade-long artistic studio, archive, fine art works, films, writings, research, technical equipment, and personal possessions were destroyed or rendered unusable by water and wind damage.

I am making this fundraiser to help Smirna immediately as she is not yet able to work from a place of calm and stability. She is currently in a safe place. However, with more storms expected in the coming days, the situation remains fragile and uncertain.

Smirna’s artistic research is rooted in lived experience. She is a war survivor from Sarajevo, and her work has long examined how bodies, land, rituals, and storytelling carry trauma, resilience, and ancestral memory across generations.

You can read about her work here

Her practice spans film, performance, sound, ritual, and research-based installations, often working with communities, non-human ecologies, and sacred knowledge systems. Her work has been exhibited and awarded internationally and is deeply committed to care, repair, and collective futures.

This fundraiser is being set up to help Smirna recover what little can still be salvaged, replace essential tools for her research and artistic practice, secure temporary stability, and begin rebuilding her life and work after this devastating loss.

Any contribution—financial or by sharing this fundraiser—means more than words can express.

You can see Smirna’s work here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smismismismi
Website: https://www.smirna.art

You can also watch one of her recent audiovisual works here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DSxnzkriBMc/?igsh=Z3drbW1sZjltdT

You can hear a lecture given by her in the House of European History recently, about her art, healing and research:
Lecture on Ancestral Healing through Art and the Alchemy of Grief

Thank you for supporting this human being in an extremely vulnerable moment.

We hope she can continue her work of care and healing, supporting others while not having to face this difficult moment alone.