LONDON (AlertNet) - A Bosnian painter has turned personal pain into a plea for harmony in an exhibition coinciding with Refugee Week that shows a traditional way of life destroyed by the nationalists who created the Balkan war.
In doing so, he challenges the cliche that the conflict sprang simply from age-old animosity between ethnic groups.
Pero Mandić fled to Serbia when fighting reached his home near the northern Bosnian town of Sanski Most in 1995, but his mother, who stayed behind, was killed shortly after he left.
“The key message is that there was peace and harmony before the war that was destroyed by politicians and external forces,” said Antony Mahony, former emergencies officer in the Balkans for British NGO Christian Aid, one of the exhibition’s sponsors.
"Reconciliation needs encouragement and an event of this kind will help on that. The Balkans have slipped off the screen and this is an opportunity to bring back issues which have still not been settled in the nine years of peace. This is what we’re trying to highlight.”
The exhibition, "Crimson Harvest", is one of a host of cultural and educational events held by British organisations to celebrate Refugee Week from June 14 to 20.
More than 200,000 people died during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia- Herzegovina, formerly part of Yugoslavia.
At the height of the war, two million people -- about 40 percent of the population -- were forced from their homes, according to the U.N. Office for the Commissioner for Refugees.
People from all of the country's main ethnic groups -- Serb, Croat and Muslim -- were displaced by the conflict.
The Dayton peace agreement, which came into force in December 1995, partitioned Bosnia into two entities: a Bosnian Serb region and a Muslim-Croat federation.
The agreement was supposed to guarantee the right of people to return to their pre-war homes or claim compensation for destroyed property.
In fact, many people have not gone back to their original homes.
'WAR CREATES MUTANTS'
Mandić’s paintings illustrate peace, war, harmony and destruction in his homeland. Some lend an animal-like quality to their human subjects.
“War creates mutants,” Mandić, who continues to live in Serbia, told AlertNet.
“When animals suffer great disturbance, like fear, when they are forced out of their routine, especially unexpectedly or violently, you need to act immediately to deal with this fear.
“Otherwise they destroy themselves. They will go into the abyss. It is the same with people.”
The exhibition runs in London from June 9 to 21 at St James Church in Picadilly.
For more information, see www.bridging-arts.com and www.peromandic.com.
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