The Sarajevo Apartment of Stanislava Pinchuk & Ennis Ćehić

Photography by Phillip Huynh 

This week the Journal takes us to the handsome Austro-Hungarian building that Stanislava Pinchuk & Ennis Ćehić have come to create, live, and write in. The artist and writer couple’s apartment, with its high ceilings, herringbone parquetry and French doors has, in time, become layered with their own additions; a heaving built-in bookshelf and a collection of vintage finds that have assimilated with its original beauty. Though it wasn’t always this way. We discover the hurdles the duo faced to get here and learn about their myriad creative pursuits — all while taking in a slice of Sarajevo life. 

SP: “It’s the kind of story that’s only funny after it has happened. But I think it says something about us as a pair, that we also found it really funny at the time.

We bought this apartment without seeing it, three years ago. It was in the height of the pandemic lockdowns, and we were stuck in Australia. We didn’t have a floor-plan, any measurements, nothing. Just some bad photos. 

We bought the flat over Viber. Banking, mortgage, power of attorney - every step was done through Viber! It was a total trip. 

After that, my first application to leave Australia was denied. We had to first sign away our diplomatic rights, put our things on a shipping container, end our lease - all of which we did, and were finally both granted permission to migrate.  

So, after all this chaos… the first time we walked into the apartment, and saw it – it was a disaster. A total disaster! The kitchen was gone, the taps were gone, the toilet bowl and bathtub were smashed into pieces. The lights were stripped out of the whole place. The walls looked like they had been in a fire, the radiators were held together with sticky tape… and on top of all that, there was a fresh death notice for the previous owner taped to the front door. ”

EC: “We walked in and just felt completely ill, like – ‘what the hell have we just done?’ 

And that’s when we realised we also left a bag behind at the airport.

But we slept on it. And the next morning, we both woke up with this great confidence that the place was amazing, and everything was going to be fine. The previous owners assumed we would be renovating and thought they were doing us a favour by doing a bunch of demolition… and so, we just decided to see it as a silver lining.

Within twenty-four hours, we found a builder, signed a contract, purposefully rented a really ugly interim apartment that we wouldn’t want to stay in for any longer than was necessary, and got hard into the renovation. It was a wild time, but the builders were great; we moved in two months later.”

EC: “Our apartment is situated in an Austro-Hungarian building - just over a century old. We’re on a main boulevard that runs along the Miljačka river, so we look down onto the water and an old church that is now The Academy of Fine Arts. It’s built to pretty classic Viennese conventions: airy and free-flowing. Each room leads into another, so you can walk the whole apartment as if in a loop. 

It has high ceilings and original herringbone parquetry, French doors and doubled-up windows. These features give the flat its soul, and they are my favourite parts.”

It’s built to pretty classic Viennese conventions: airy and free-flowing. Each room leads into another, so you can walk the whole apartment as if in a loop.

SP: “I love how the sun passes through the flat all day, and the sound of the river running - especially when you sleep. I really love the sound of cars and trams on the boulevard when it rains, and the call to prayer. 

But my favourite is the view, which looks like living in the middle of a European city, and in an Alpine storybook village, at the same time. I really like lying on the couch and seeing cars driving across the mountain; their headlights carving through the landscape like in a little diorama. At night, the houses in the hill just look like stars.

And it’s really beautiful in every season; in summer, the foliage is bright green, in autumn golden and red. Winter covers everything in fluffy, white snow - and then in spring, all the cherry blossoms in the hills bloom pink and white. ”

EC: “At the moment I am in love with the floor lamp that’s in our bedroom. It is round and yellow and looks like the sun. It was designed by Harvey Guzzini for the Yugoslav furniture company Meblo in the 80s, and we found it in Belgrade. I also have a particular fascination with a Jonny Niesche work that hangs in our hallway. I bought it with the advance from my first book, so it would always remind me of that milestone moment of my career.

I often find myself falling in love with different objects though. I think it has to do with the eclecticism of our household things. ”

The clay tiles are two hundred years old – they used to be the roof of an old building in Novi Sad.

SP: “For me, it’s the bookshelf. It’s my love letter to Ennis!

And I really like the kitchen floor. I did a lot of the work on it by myself. The clay tiles are two hundred years old – they used to be the roof of an old building in Novi Sad. So there’s just something really nice about how they feel under your feet. ”

Stan & Ennis' bed is dressed with our 100% Linen Flat Sheet in Mist & Cotton Percale Pillowslip Set in Milk.

SP: “I generally like a minimal bedroom with minimal sheets, to have some sense of calm… so a floor-to-ceiling, mirrored, angled, totally disco closet was an obvious choice. I can’t believe I talked Ennis into it, actually.

But in my mind, it reflects the calm twice over—if that makes sense. And it’s kind of great when we have parties, because the infinity fun-house angles in the alcove that secretly lead into the bathroom are pretty challenging if your guests are tipsy. Even sober, it took us a little while to get used to it.”

EC: “In the mornings, we tend to stay in and drink coffee in bed. It’s a nice way to ease into the day, if we have the time. We also both read a lot in there”

SP: “I think I always knew I would have to do something creative, even if I didn’t really have a clear idea that you could be an artist as a vocation. But I always knew, I think, that I had to make my own world in this life, in one way or another. But the path is funny, because I studied philosophy. So it was never a conventional career path, but that sounds right - because to be an artist is to have a really unconventional life.”

EC: “I studied both Creative Writing and Marketing - which is a good summary of what I’ve always done, and what still I do now with my life. I spend half of my week working on literary fiction, mainly stories and more recently, a novel. The other half of my week, I work as a creative director & brand strategist for clients primarily in Europe & Australia, increasingly more now in the cultural sphere: galleries, museums, music festivals, architects and furniture companies.

I’m quite autobiographical as a writer - my first book, Sadvertising, was born from my years of office life in big advertising agencies. Now, the novel I’m working on is very much about returning to Bosnia, a semi-autobiographical work of fiction about a young man who comes back to his birth village for the first time in thirty years.”

 A stack of IN BED 100% Organic Cotton Percale; Milk Pillowslip Set, Milk Duvet Cover and our new Blue Stripe Pillowslip Set. 

EC: “It’s wild to say this, but Sadvertising was optioned for a screen adaptation. I was in a writers room recently with a bunch of incredibly talented people who are trying to reimagine the stories I wrote as a TV show. 

I’m also writing an experimental essay about return migration. I don’t often write non-fiction, for me it’s easier to get to the truth through storytelling – so this is quite a nice challenge for me; I’m taking it as permission to be experimental.”

SP: “I recently made my first film, The Theatre of War — which has been a really inspiring process, especially in terms of finding a really different way of thinking. So, much sooner than I expected, I am making a second film at the moment.”

SP: “I never really thought about it, but I suppose it’s because I’m an artist, that I mostly treat this space like a ‘white cube’ in which the artworks and furniture pieces are the focal points. I guess that’s just what I know to do.

I mean, in the photos, you’ll see the wooden plinths that are our furniture in every room— they’re from one of my exhibitions. Even our coffee table is two of these plinths. One day I’d like to make something in their place, and finally get to take some plinths to my studio, which would be very useful. But all in its own time.”

EC: “It’s hard running against what a space is: you have to listen and hear out its demands. Both Stanislava and I are quite patient when it comes to furnishing this place. We are still feeling it out with time, figuring out what works and what’s actually needed. 

We’ve always known that this apartment demands minimalism, but it also wants to possess parts of the region’s history. So our flat is also a pretty natural response to where we live. There are Turkish Ottoman cooking utensils in the kitchen, Austro-Hungarian mirrors and chandeliers in the entrance, lots of Space Age Yugoslav lamps and armchairs, and then Slavic embroideries everywhere. 

We’ve always known that this apartment demands minimalism, but it also wants to possess parts of the region’s history. So our flat is also a pretty natural response to where we live.

There’s also a fair bit of Ettore Sotsass, who - although it’s not spoken about a lot - was held as a prisoner of war here in Sarajevo during WWII.”

SP: “We didn’t own much furniture before moving, so I think that’s also happened naturally just by picking up things from around Sarajevo, or from driving around the Balkans. 

Most of our furniture is second-hand, so you inevitably end up with pieces from all these histories and empires that make this city what it is.”

EC: “There’s a saying that “all logic ends where Bosnia & Herzegovina begins”, so maybe that’s why we moved here—to defy our own expectations somehow. But I think it was the right time for both of us to move to Europe to expand our creative practices.   

Personally, I also always wanted to live in my homeland as an adult, having been exiled from Bosnia in the 1990s, when I was a child. So being here, in this particular period of my life, is really important for me. ”

SP: “For me, I felt incredibly at home as soon as I arrived here - it reminded me so much of my home city in Ukraine. I think the similarities in language really helped me to get around too.

It’s not always easy, by any means - but I really love the Balkans. But even then, there is still no other city here with quite the soul of Sarajevo for me. And Sarajevans! I really, really love Sarajevans. I don’t think I’ve ever lived anywhere where I have laughed so hard, and as much.”

EC: “There’s a fruit & veg market under a freeway bridge here in Ciglane, a neighbourhood that’s about fifteen minutes walk from our place. When we are home, we try to go there every weekend. The sellers are the growers, makers and foragers and incredibly good-humoured. Plus, it still has some of the cheapest coffee in town. ”

I work from home mostly, but I reserve my literary work for a cafe called Bugatti. It is, if I may say so, the sexiest place in this city, located in a neighbourhood called Džidžikovac. The clientele is old-school elite; retired lawyers, doctors, architects. Sometimes even politicians join in. These old-timers are always in there; watching football on the screen above the bar, chit-chatting over espressos and cigarettes, as I just sit in the back room on my own, writing. To be honest, they haven’t accepted me yet, but I’m working on it.”

SP: “Otherwise, it’s really easy for us to just stay in our block. Drink outside at Boris Smoje, dinner at Konoba Luka, chill in Veliki Park, see films at Meeting Point and pick up something to read at BuyBook. 

Mostly, I have coffee at the café under my studio, which is on the corner where Archduke Franz Ferdinand & his wife Sophie were assassinated in 1914, beginning World War I. 

I really love seeing the tourists every morning. It’s easy to complain about, but actually, it makes me happy to see relaxed people every morning, who are being where they want to be, seeing the things that they want to see.”

SP: “This year, I’m on the teaching faculty of a really experimental Masters programme at Elisava in Barcelona. So at the moment I’m mostly there, leading my unit, kind of an experimental laboratory on how to mediate monuments, or otherwise make anti/monuments and architectural protest structures. It’s a super cool process, and really inspiring. 

Beyond that, in the studio I’m busy with the next film, some photo experiments & lots of research. ”