IRWIN: Was ist Kunst Bosnia and Herzegovina / Heroes 1941–1945

Most of the portraits of the People’s Heroes from Bosnia and Herzegovina were made by Bosnian-Herzegovinian artists in the aftermath of WWII, and the collection was completed by 1954. Although the idea was to include them in the permanent collection of the Museum of the Revolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, that was never realised. Instead, the public first saw them in an exhibition in the mid-1950s, after which they were deposited in the museum storerooms, falling into oblivion. Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina (until 1993 the Museum of the Revolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina) invited the IRWIN collective to help with the preparation and staging of an exhibition of selected works. The collective recognised its qualities and appropriated it to frame a display entitled Was ist Kunst Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is by no means IRWIN’s first project of this kind. In the past the collective have conceived a number of projects, in response to the particular contexts of the selected places and areas with shared common experience of history.

The exhibition was conceived and realised in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska (Banja Luka) and with the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo).

Photo: Jaka Babnik, GBJ archive