I know the last post was a bit of a bummer. (But TBH, #sorrynotsorry – I didn’t want to gloss over such an important part of Mostar.)
The city is definitely still healing.
And one major way that people are rebuilding Mostar is through street art.
Despite the fact that the war ended over 20 years ago, bullet holes, mortar damage, and destroyed buildings are still commonplace. Nearly every street you walk down has at least one crumbling, empty husk of a building, reduced to rubble, overgrown by weeds and garbage.
(Sometimes adjacent to modern reconstruction, for full effect.)
One way that locals have decided to transform the city is by turning Mostar into a canvas.
To use these buildings, walls, and local spaces as a place to facilitate dialogue and bridge cultural divides.
Since 2012, the city has hosted the yearly Mostar Street Arts Festival, where artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Slovenia (as well as other countries worldwide) come together to cover the city’s public spaces in art.
It’s an opportunity for amateurs, as well as renowned artists, to make their mark on the city.
Because of this annual tradition, it isn’t too difficult to find street art as you wander through Mostar.
The fresh coats of paint provide a new visual identity for the city. Despite the current state of disrepair that remains, it’s a way of healing and moving forward.
The place with the highest concentration of art is the Staklena banka, a dilapidated old Ljubljanska bank building, better known as the Sniper Tower.
During the war, this high rise was used as a sniper’s nest where assassins would pick off unsuspecting Bosniak (Muslim) citizens below.
The outside walls are covered in bullet holes and art.
While it’s not exactly allowed (or even encouraged)… many people have taken to urban exploration of this once grand, now crumbling, concrete skeleton.
So there’s also plenty of graffiti and street art inside.
Some of the art is hopeful.
Some is sad.
And some is silly.
It offers a medium for social commentary.
And a way for people to voice their post-war perspectives.
Mostar is not an easy place to write about. It’s complex. It’s divided. It’s still reeling from the recent war.
But it’s also healing.
And street art plays an important role in distracting from the war damage.
It’s a way to be hopeful, sad, and silly. To be more than broken buildings and shattered glass.
To reclaim the city, and to move forward.
{Want to see more of the Sniper Tower? After hearing stories about squatters living there (often drunk or high to forget the war atrocities they saw), I wasn’t super keen to do a lot of exploring. But that hasn’t stopped other tourists. Read this account or watch this video.}
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