Street artists from Sarajevo paint over bullet holes from Bosnian war

Graffiti allows youth to reshape a city steeped in history

Street artists from the Bosnia and Herzegovina capital of Sarajevo are painting over the areas where bullet holes still pockmark the buildings from three years of bombardment during the Bosnian war. Art has not only become “a form of therapy” to heal the capital’s wounds but has provided an important springboard to young artists as the country’s unemployment rate nears 30%. 

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.

A half-pipe of technicolour snakes its way through the verdant Mount Trebevic, once an Olympic bobsled route – now layered in ever-changing art.

“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.

Retouching his mural of a dragon, his painting’s gallery is this street art hotspot between the pines.

Like most of his work, he paints the fantastic, as far removed from the divisive political slogans that stain walls elsewhere in the Balkan nation.

“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.

“It’s for everyone.”

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.

Attacks on the city left over 11,500 people dead, injured 50,000 and forced tens of thousands to flee.

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.

A form of therapy

“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.

Frenkie vividly remembers being caught by police early in his career, while tagging trains bound for Croatia in the northwest Bosnian town of Tuzla.