I am...what I see through the window of my apartment
SLOBODANKA BATOVANJA | Arts, Activism and Social Justice Summer School | Urban Word Collective | Global | Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
I have been thinking for a long time about what I will paint that determines my identity in the city where I was born and raised. Then I remembered Princip's bridge, which I have been crossing since childhood and which I still see from the kitchen window of my apartment. Even for the artist Dobrivoj Beljkašić, this bridge was an obsessive topic in his artistic work, and we had the opportunity to see several versions of his bridge in the museum that day. As an Orthodox woman who was born in Sarajevo, grew up and stayed in Sarajevo throughout the war, I think that this bridge remains a symbol of unity among people of all religions who live in our city. On June 28, 1914, a shot was heard from this bridge, which meant the revolt of the local population against the occupiers in the form of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This event and the death of Franz Ferdinand caused the beginning of the First World War. I am proud of the glorious and rich past of the city where I live. I was born in Sarajevo and I want to die in Sarajevo, watching how the shores of the Miljacka are connected by numerous bridges.
In October 2023, an exhibition was held on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dobrivoj Beljkašić, an artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina, who fled to Bristol in the early 1990s due to the war raging in Sarajevo and the rest of the country. The exhibition was realized in the art museum Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I often hang out with my peers at additional activities for us senior citizens. The museum educator who works with the museum audience organized an additional activity for us where we were guided through the exhibition "Painter of Restless Imagination, Dobrivoje Beljkašić, 1923-2023" with active participation in the discussion about the works. Through works in which the artist depicted the Sarajevo bridges, and the sacred architecture of this multi-ethnic city with a multi-layered cultural history, we talked about our upbringing in pre-war Sarajevo. For the creative task, we were given by the educator to illustrate the areas of the city, buildings, or people that symbolize our growing up in this city and the way in which the city, its environment, and people shaped our identity.
