SARAJEVO: Bullet holes still pockmark many Sarajevo buildings; others threaten collapse under disrepair, but street artists in the Bosnian capital are using their work to reshape a city steeped in history.<\/p>\n
A half-pipe of technicolor snakes its way through the verdant Mount Trebevic, once an Olympic bobsled route \u2014 now layered in ever-changing art.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really good place for artists to come here to paint, because you can paint here freely,\u201d Kerim Musanovic told AFP, spraycan in hand as he repaired his work on the former site of the 1984 Sarajevo Games.<\/p>\n
Retouching his mural of a dragon, his painting\u2019s gallery is this street art hotspot between the pines.<\/p>\n
Like most of his work, he paints the fantastic, as far removed from the divisive political slogans that stain walls elsewhere in the Balkan nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be like a positive view. When you see my murals or my artworks, I don\u2019t want people to think too much about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the Bosnian war, 1992-1995, Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern conflict, as Bosnian Serb forces encircled and bombarded the city for 44 months.<\/p>\n
Attacks on the city left over 11,500 people dead, injured 50,000 and forced tens of thousands to flee.<\/p>\n
But in the wake of a difficult peace, that divided the country into two autonomous entities, Bosnia\u2019s economy continues to struggle leaving the physical scars of war still evident around the city almost three decades on.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the war, segregation, politics, and nationalism were very strong, but graffiti and hip-hop broke down all those walls and built new bridges between generations,\u201d local muralist Adnan Hamidovic, also known as rapper Frenkie, said.<\/p>\n
Frenkie vividly remembers being caught by police early in his career, while tagging trains bound for Croatia in the northwest Bosnian town of Tuzla.<\/p>\n
The 43-year-old said the situation was still tense then, with police suspecting he was doing \u201csomething political.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the young artist, only one thing mattered: \u201cMaking the city your own.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graffiti was a part of Sarajevo life even during the war, from signs warning of sniper fire to a bulletproof barrier emblazoned with the words \u201cPink Floyd\u201d \u2014 a nod to the band\u2019s 1979 album The Wall.<\/p>\n
Sarajevo Roses \u2014 fatal mortar impact craters filled with red resin \u2014 remain on pavements and roads around the city as a memorial to those killed in the strikes.<\/p>\n
When he was young, Frenkie said the thrill of illegally painting gripped him, but it soon became \u201ca form of therapy\u201d combined with a desire to do something significant in a country still recovering from war.<\/p>\n
\u201cSarajevo, after the war, you can imagine, it was a very, very dark place,\u201d he said at Manifesto gallery where he exhibited earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cGraffiti brought life into the city and also color.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarajevo\u2019s annual Fasada festival, first launched in 2021, has helped promote the city\u2019s muralists while also repairing buildings, according to artist and founder Benjamin Cengic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe look for overlooked neighborhoods, rundown facades,\u201d Cengic said.<\/p>\n
His team fixes the buildings that will also act as the festival\u2019s canvas, sometimes installing insulation and preserving badly damaged homes in the area.<\/p>\n
The aim is to \u201creally work on creating bonds between local people, between artists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mostar, a city in southern Bosnia, will also host the 14th edition of its annual street art festival in August.<\/p>\n
With unemployment nearing 30 percent in Bosnia, street art also offers an important springboard to young artists, University of Sarajevo sociology professor Sarina Bakic said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe social context for young people is very difficult,\u201d Bakic said.<\/p>\n
Ljiljana Radosevic, a researcher at Finland\u2019s Jyvaskyla University, said graffiti allowed youth to shake off any \u201cnationalist narrative or imposed identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a way of resisting,\u201d Radosevic said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SARAJEVO: Bullet holes still pockmark many Sarajevo buildings; others threaten collapse under disrepair, but street artists in the Bosnian capital are using their work to reshape a city steeped in history. A half-pipe of technicolor snakes its way through the verdant Mount Trebevic, once an Olympic bobsled route \u2014 now layered in ever-changing art. \u201cIt\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":84445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84446,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84443\/revisions\/84446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}