User:Bojana Kos Grabar

Grabar Kos Bojana - Iris

Grabar Kos Bojana (1960, Murska Sobota) spent the early childhood in Lendava, where her father Grabar Kos Josip, geometrician, worked at the oil company Nafta Lendava. The family moved to Selnica ob Dravi in 1964, and settled in Maribor in 1969. She attended II. gimnazija Maribor and between 1979 to 1986 studied analytic-research sociology at the Fakulteta za sociologijo, politične vede in novinarstvo v Ljubljani.

World wars burdened her entire existence, self-recognition and professional determination. Family Tasek migrated from the Čakovec area to the port of Trieste where the youngest daughter, her grandmother Anuška was born (1910 Trieste - 1997 Petišovci). Due to the World War 1 the family repatriated and settled in Petesháza Petišovci, where Anushka married Mihael Grabar Kos (1904 Velika - 1963 Bjelovar) from Velika, Varaždin in 1933. They had one son and separated soon after the birth of Josip (1934 Peteshaza - 2012 Maribor). Anushka worked as a domestic employee of Jewish families in Lendava and Čakovec until massive deportations to the concentration camps in 1943/44 [1].

Mother Daniela (1937 Podgrad, Gornja Radgona) is a descendent of the World War 1 refugee family Likar - Šubic from Gorizia. The couple Likar and their three children were moved to Nagykanizsa, in 1920 they settled in Ptuj until the sudden death of the father in 1930. The youngest daughter Anna (1909 Gorizia - 2004 Gornja Radgona) met her husband Franciscus (Stradner) Strah in Maribor, where he attended technical school, and she pedagogic high school Učiteljišče Maribor. Before the World War 2 the family Strah held a shop&pub in Spodnja Ščavnica, but their lives were shattered apart. Anna and three daughters were literally saved from exile as taken off a truck only minutes before the departure, Franciscus (1908 Pula - 1993 Gornja Radgona) got captured, taken to a collection cell in Maribor, then imprisoned at the castle Borl, wherefrom mobilised to Prague until 1945. Widowed grandmother Florijana Likar (1884 Bovec - 1974 Gornja Radgona) was deported together with the first born, diasabled daughter Nada to Bosanska Dubica until 1945.

Bojana was raised by the internationally oriented, non-communist family where daily communication was often held in four different languages (slovenian, austrian, hungarian, croatian, etc.). During the summer holiday 1979 in Dubrovnik she got involved with the anti-Cold war pacifists from Amsterdam. Friendship with some active members of the Pacifistisch Socialistische Partij and few years later engaged with a member of an avant-garde music band Desert Corbusier from Groningen lead her into permanent migrating between Slovenia and the Netherlands. During the Easter holiday in april 1984 she took part at the demonstrative actions of the Dutch pacifists among whom were the most outstanding a doctor Co van Melle, a priest Kees Koning, and also activists from Groningen. Dutch massive protesting continuously during several years of Hollanditis achieved the major switch in the governmental strategy regarding the Cold war nuclear weapon hustling between Washington and Moscow. The Peace-village close to the NATO Airbase in Woensdrecht persisted in the campaigning against the positioning of the Pershing XM missiles for longer than a decade when it got demolished by force.

Between 1989 and 2001 she devotedly explored conflicting effects of the SFR Yugoslavia separation that affected social comprehensions of the customised ethnic diversity, wrote articles from the point of nonconventional views at the contemporary art in Slovenia involving spatial analysis, fertility and IVF problems of women, studied environmental impact and risks of the global population growth. She is an environmental sociologists, textile designer and the animal-welfare activist.

In january 2003 Bojana joined the Dutch Peace movement due to the Iraq war. The protesting activities supported by the oposional political parties (AA/DG, D66, Groen Links, PVDA, DCP) to end partaking in the joint NATO millitary invasion in Iraq overwhelmed the Dutch nation increasingly during the two years political debates and antimilirastic struggle until the political agreement to return the Dutch troups back home, was finally achieved.

She adopted a nick name Iris when lived in Amsterdam. As moved to The Hague in 2009 she starts pursuing the tradition of her grand-grandfather Florijan Tasek who was employed at an Esterházy estate in Međimurje, where cared for horses. She establishes Stichting Art:reSet, another environmental organisation in a range of the few previously formed in Slovenia aiming sustainability, to provide social ecology and protect nature/animals in daily practise.