The Formation of a Culture of Critical Resistance in Sarajevo

Abstract

This article addresses the particular nature of the ruins of destroyed and abandoned buildings in the besieged Sarajevo (1992–1995) as sites of artistic interventions. The unrepeatable and impermanent nature of the ruins, subject to deterioration and further destruction, and their physical location within the Sarajevo battlefield (being permanently exposed to shelling and sniper fire) is viewed in the context of creating, installing and viewing art as well as in challenging conventional means of Bosnian art-making (artists began to use soot, ash, fragments, burned stumps, books, waste material, junk), and introducing innovative curatorial strategies. The site-specific artworks and exhibitions in damaged and destroyed buildings produce discursive spaces, based on gathering, dialogue, interaction and exchange of common experiences of existence and survival in a city devoid of basic human needs. The persistence of the artists and audience in showing their struggle and resistance to the imposed conditions defines these exhibition-related practices as catalysts of cultural resistance in Sarajevo.