engleski

The Muralization of War Memories

While the Croatian memoryscape is constantly changing with the addition of new monuments, memorial museums, and commemorative public spaces related to the Croatian War of Independence, or Homeland War (Domovinski rat, 1991–1995), there is a parallel memorialization emerging on walls and buildings across the country. Murals depicting iconic images, battles, units, and individual soldiers from the Homeland War are increasingly visible throughout Croatian cities and towns, often in the same style as graffiti celebrating local football clubs. While football Ultras had always been active in graffiti actions to demarcate territory and challenge rivals, in recent years this has shifted beyond tagging, vandalism, and the ubiquitous Vukovar street art into impressive murals that at times also function as semi-official sites of memory. This contribution represents initial attempts to map and categorize this relatively new form of memorialization of the conflicts in the 1990s, and offers comparisons to similar phenomenon in Northern Ireland, Poland, and other countries.

murals ; graffiti ; memory politics ; Croatia ; former Yugoslavia

Pozvano predvanje održano na IOS Leibniz Institute, Regensburg, Njemačka, 22.10.2021. https://www.gsoses-ur.de/events-and-news/detail/muralization-of-war-memories-croatia-in-comparative-perspectives