2010: Monument at Petrova Gorao to the uprising of the people of Kordun and Banija. Wikicommons/ Sandir Bordas. All rights reserved.
Imagine, not knowing anything about socialist Yugoslavia, suddenly waking up in the mountains of Bosnia and Herzegovina to encounter monumental sculptures like those impressive and gigantic monuments in Sutjeska or Petrova Gora – you might be prompted to ascribe it to some alien civilisation.
This is in fact what happened when the Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers for the first time exhibited photographs of Yugoslav socialist monuments at the Breese-Little gallery in London in 2013. The Guardian soon published an article with the title “ The second world war memorials that look like alien art”,[1] and very soon the Internet was full of images of socialist architecture and sculpture from all around ex-Yugoslavia that was regularly described as “alien”.
