Utopia in Decay: The Monuments of Yugoslavia

Symbolizing the utopian vision of the former Yugoslavia, these Communist-era statues represented vision and hope toward the future. Now in a state of decay, the statues have come to symbolize a lost era of Communist regime.

According to Steven Jacobs, curator for the Flemish Institute for Visual, Audiovisual and Media Art:

“Paying attention to their careful integration in the landscape, he demonstrates that landscapes are turned into sites of memory. Commemorating the common traumatic experiences during the Second World War and the partisan battles, these monuments were intended to provide the people of Yugoslavia with a common history and identity that would be productive in its future evolution. However, in the late twentieth century, these landscapes were torn by nationalist and ethnic violence and their monuments are now neglected. The idea of progress has been buried under the weight of history and the monuments, which were once machines of sightseeing and (photographic) image production, have become obsolete and invisible.”