Family members in Krajina Identification Project (Sejkovaca mortuary). Photo: ICMP

Essays The Missing and the Mass Graves

Nearly three decades after the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, thousands of people are missing and mass graves are regularly found. Relatives still search for knowledge about their loved ones in the midst of secrets, rumors and ethnonationalist denial. As the country struggles to come to terms with this dark legacy of the war, art has emerged as a space for recognition of the lingering presence of absence of the missing.

Published in the printed edition of Baltic Worlds BW 2023:4, p 42.46
Published on balticworlds.com on December 11, 2023

abstract

Nearly three decades after the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, thousands of people are missing and mass graves are regularly found. Relatives still search for knowledge about their loved ones in the midst of secrets, rumors and ethnonationalist denial. As the country struggles to come to terms with this dark legacy of the war, art has emerged as a space for recognition of the lingering presence of absence of the missing.

Keywords: Bosnia and Herzegovina, missing, mass graves, ethnonationalism, presence of absence, recognition, peace.

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Johanna Mannergren Selimovic