“Returning in Colour: New Works on Migration and Memory”.

ABOUT

Artist Adela Kusur migrated to Australia as a Bosnian refugee during the war, a journey that continues to shape the emotional and conceptual foundations of her practice. After spending several years living and working in Sarajevo and Berlin, she has recently returned to Australia, where she continues to develop her visual language through expanded abstract and resin-based work.

The interplay of tone, form, and spatial tension remains central to her artistic process. Adela is particularly drawn to how colour, layering, and the arrangement of shapes can evoke shifting emotional states within a given environment.

Her work is informed by the sense of in-betweenness that comes from living between two continents—her birthplace and the country where she grew up. This ongoing experience of return, distance, and reconnection catalyses her practice, allowing her to explore themes of memory, detachment and belonging through an ever-evolving material and conceptual approach.

Recent Work

In In her recent body of work, Adela expands her resin practice to explore shifting emotional landscapes shaped by migration, memory, and return. Through translucency, movement, and layered colour, her work evokes the fluid boundaries experienced by those who exist between places, identities, and histories. Her artwork explores alternate universes and dreams of memories and nostalgia.

A refugee of the Bosnian war, Adela understands the disorientation of uprooting and the transformative role of care during times of change. Her family’s arrival in Australia provided safety, encouragement, and the space to adapt while preserving their cultural heritage—an experience that continues to shape her artistic language. Now based in Australia again, her practice reflects the ongoing dialogue between past and present, allowing layered histories and emotions to surface through resin, colour, and form.

Residency

Hillcrest Merimbula

Adela recently undertook an artist residency at the Hillcrest Hotel in Merimbula, where the coastal light and environment played a pivotal role in expanding her resin practice. The residency offered time, space, and new sensory influences that deepened her exploration of translucency, colour interplay, and movement. Working in this setting allowed her to engage with themes of memory, migration, and return through a renewed material clarity, marking a significant shift in her current body of work.

Kuma International

Earlier in her journey, Adela was an artist-in-residence with Kuma International, an NGO founded in Sarajevo in 2018. Dedicated to teaching the next generation how the arts can engage with difficult histories and imagine transformation, Kuma’s mission deeply aligned with the evolution of her practice. The residency strengthened her connection to her homeland and enriched her creative inquiry into belonging, identity, and the emotional geographies shaped by displacement.