Friday 8 December 2017

spomenik

From the Serbo-Croatian word for monument, we discover via Calvert Journal, there’s a well-curated, well- researched catalogue of the thousands of memorials to World War II erected under the direction of Josip Broz Tito’s regime in Yugoslavia from the 1960s to 1990. We only encountered a few during our trip to Croatia but then again we were not equipped with a map to seek them out, nor did we appreciate their historical context and intent to unify an amalgam of people through large scale community art project. Uniquely, the abstract geometric objects (previously) were proposed as a means to decontextualize conflict and remembrance and a departure from the usual monuments of Soviet heroes—which more than a quarter of a century after the fall of the Iron Curtain, still elicit discussion and debate in all forms.