Sarajevo street art marks out brighter future

National Post

28-07-2025

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.
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A half-pipe of technicolour snakes its way through the verdant Mount Trebevic, once an Olympic bobsled route — now layered in ever-changing art.
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'It's a really good place for artists to come here to paint, because you can paint here freely,' Kerim Musanovic told AFP, spraycan in hand as he repaired his work on the former site of the 1984 Sarajevo Games.
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'I want to be like a positive view. When you see my murals or my artworks, I don't want people to think too much about it.
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'It's for everyone.'
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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.
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Attacks on the city left over 11,500 people dead, injured 50,000 and forced tens of thousands to flee.
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But in the wake of a difficult peace, that divided the country into two autonomous entities, Bosnia's economy continues to struggle leaving the physical scars of war still evident around the city almost three decades on.
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'A form of therapy'
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'After 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,' local muralist Adnan Hamidovic, also known as rapper Frenkie, said.
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Frenkie vividly remembers being caught by police early in his career, while tagging trains bound for Croatia in the northwest Bosnian town of Tuzla.
The 43-year-old said the situation was still tense then, with police suspecting he was doing 'something political'.
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For the young artist, only one thing mattered: 'Making the city your own'.
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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 'Pink Floyd' — a nod to the band's 1979 album The Wall.
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Sarajevo Roses — fatal mortar impact craters filled with red resin — remain on pavements and roads around the city as a memorial to those killed in the strikes.
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When he was young, Frenkie said the thrill of illegally painting gripped him, but it soon became 'a form of therapy' combined with a desire to do something significant in a country still recovering from war.
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'Sarajevo, after the war, you can imagine, it was a very, very dark place,' he said at Manifesto gallery where he exhibited earlier this year.