# @simonberger.art on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DcL-ntaowVQ
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/71152472-simonbergerart-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/4788af7bbc.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-08-18T15:55:45.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Simon Berger (@simonberger.art) — https://gondola.cc/simonberger.art

## Caption

This September, I have the profound honour of presenting «The Persistence of Presence» at the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo - a place where Swiss art history has travelled an extraordinary distance to meet the present.

The Gallery is home to more than a hundred works by Ferdinand Hodler, brought to Sarajevo through the remarkable story of Jeanne Charles, Hodler’s model and companion, who later married the Bosnian diplomat Mehmed Ćišić. The collection moved across continents and generations before finding its home in Sarajevo. 

But the story of these works does not end with their arrival.

During the siege of Sarajevo, when the Gallery itself was being shelled, its pre-war director made an extraordinary decision: refugees were moved into the protected storage depot where the collection was kept. Their presence helped protect the artworks from being taken or destroyed - and in turn, the artworks’ shelter became a refuge for people who had lost their homes.

Art protected people.
People protected art.

That story stays with me.

As a fellow Swiss artist, to exhibit here, in the presence of Hodler’s work, feels less like stepping into a museum than stepping into a living continuum of memory. Switzerland and Sarajevo, Hodler and the present, destruction and preservation - all meeting in the same rooms.

Hodler repeatedly returned to history, not to leave it in the past, but to make it present again. His figures, landscapes and historical subjects transform memory into something physical, rhythmic and alive.

My work begins from that impulse.

A century after Hodler, I return to his questions with different materials, a different world, and the same belief that art can make something absent present again.

To stand here as a Swiss artist, alongside his works, in a city that carried them through war, is an extraordinary honour.

THE PERSISTENCE OF PRESENCE
Simon Berger reinterprets Ferdinand Hodler
National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo
13 September - 10 October 2026

Supported by swissembassysarajevo 

#SimonBerger #SimonBergerArt #GlassArt

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glassart, simonbergerart, simonberger

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