Post-Yugoslav Commemorative Street Art: From Hegemonic Narratives to Slow Memory Activism

• In Event: Yugoslav Memories III: The Impact of Popular Cultural Memory Work in Post-Yugoslav Spaces

Abstract

Although commemorative street art in the West is frequently subversive and gives voice to marginalized social groups, in the post-Yugoslav space elaborately conceptualized and sophisticated political graffiti and mnemonic, or “memory-making”, murals more often reproduce dominant ethno-nationalist narratives of the wars of the 1990s. Nevertheless, mnemonic murals have the potential to function as counter-narratives in the contested memoryscapes of Southeastern Europe. Drawing upon comparative research in the Americas and Europe, as well as the concept of Slow Memory, this paper explores the impact of the muralization of war as memory work in the Yugoslav successor states.

Author

• Vjeran Ivan Pavlakovic, U of Rijeka (Croatia)