Overview

This book follows the lives of Sarajevan visual artists as they responded to the rising instability and political fragmentation that defined the last days of Yugoslavia’s existence. Exploring how these artists understood and spoke about the onset of war, it places a focus on a series of recognizable discourses, touching upon notions of Yugoslav common culture, civilization and cultural resistance, which have since become synonymous with the memory of the siege of Sarajevo. This book hinges its central arguments on a microhistorical reading of this unique cultural community that existed simultaneously on the practical periphery of Yugoslav cultural developments and within the center of the state’s fragmentation. In doing so, it offers a novel approach towards understanding the experiences of everyday life in besieged Sarajevo.