Recently, in the Guardian, Joshua Surtees described them as follows. “Erected in tranquil fields in the middle of nowhere, Spomeniks – which means monuments in Serbo-Croatian – look like alien landings, crop circles or Pink Floyd album covers.” He continues: “Commissioned by Tito to commemorate Second World War battle sites, they tear down traditional ideas of what a war memorial should be. Tito asked leading architects of the Yugoslav cultural movement, such as Dušan Džamonja, to design them – the British equivalent would be Harold Wilson commissioning Henry Moore to create war memorials and dotting them all over Britain in the least-visited places.” Spomeniks have become a successful brand. However, almost none of the statements made above are true. And in several exhibitions, publications and actions, architects, artists and activists in the countries that once made up the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have started to answer back.

There was no specific call or commission by Tito or the Yugoslav government for monumental sculptures, nor for abstract ones, nor were they all Second World War memorials as such. The sculptures that Kempenaers photographed – and which have since gone into circulation as abstracted images – commemorate a variety of different events. “Spomenik #2 (Petrova Gora)”, of a curved, metal sculpture with several pieces missing, is the “Monument to the uprising of the people of Kordun and Banija”, designed by Vojin Bakic and finished in 1981. It stands on the site where 300 barely armed local peasants were killed fighting against the ferociously violent fascist Ustaše militia in 1942. “Spomenik #5 (Kruševo)”, a bulbous white concrete structure with a walkway through the middle, is the Ilinden Monument in Macedonia, which is dedicated both to the Ilinden Uprising of 1903 against the Ottoman Empire (it contains the remains of one of its leaders) and to local partisan battles in 1941-44; it was designed by Iskra Grabuloska and Jordan Grabuloski in 1974. “Spomenik #6 (Kozara)”, a twisting, tubular concrete sculpture designed by Dusan Džamonja in 1969, is the Monument to the Revolution in Mrakovica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and is specifically dedicated to the Partisans and civilians – around 70,000 – killed or deported to concentration camps in the area in June and July 1942. 

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