“A comparison of satellite images from 2002 to 2022 shows radical change and building development in the area, while erasing any traces of the battlefield and failing to preserve historically significant artefacts which could aid in cultural and collective remembrance,” Catovic Hughes told BIRN.

During the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo, Catovic Hughes was a teenager, and the exhibition represents her attempt to decipher and reinterpret her memories three decades later.

Although her project is personal, Catovic Hughes hopes to create a space for dialogue about this little talked-about part of the Sarajevo battlefield.

“These are voices from the past, which in a symbolic way, give us a direction for how to build an inclusive future, where individuals’ stories should become collective memory,” she said.

The exhibition is being displayed at BIRN’s Reporting House, a space that will be home to a museum that will explore issues linked to the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the role played by media in conflicts.

Catovic Hughes’s project is based on research into the Hague Tribunal’s archives, part of the Enhancing Accountability and Memorialisation Processes in the Balkans project, financed by the Matra Regional Rule of Law Programme.

The exhibition is supported by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, SIDA and the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It will be on display from March 17 to 24, daily from 12 noon to 5pm, at the Reporting House, Ferhadija 10, Sarajevo.

Court archive documents hanging in the exhibition room. Photo: S.C.H.

Moss found on the battlefield. Photo: S.C.H.

Threads making a map of the battlefield. Photo: S.C.H.

Archive documents in the exhibition space. Photo: S.C.H.