Spomenik
“Spomenik”, 148x100x50cm, Concrete, 2019
Spomenik marks a new phase in Eren’s ongoing artistic and academic research into the modern monuments of former Yugoslavia. While his previous series, Abstract Structures, explored these monuments through photographs translated into watercolour paintings, Spomenik takes a different approach, developing an original form informed by their historical and aesthetic context.
Drawing on the visual language of the iconic monuments built during Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia, Eren reinterprets their distinctive formal vocabulary through an abstract and sharply defined sculptural language. Rather than reproducing individual monuments, the work transforms their architectural principles into a new form.
Through its material and production process, Spomenik also shifts the ideological meanings embedded in these structures. Detached from their original historical context, their forms acquire new meanings in a different temporal and spatial setting. In this sense, Eren proposes an alternative approach to cultural preservation, in which the legacy of modern monuments is carried forward through the transformation of their formal language.
What is Spomenik?
The term, which means monument in Serbian-Croatian language
and gives the name to the work, refers to World War II monuments dating back to the Josip Tito era in Balkan countries today. The monuments in question keep the memory of losses in Yugoslavia during the war of independence alive in the memory of society as a function, as well as reflect the progressive perspective of a socialist and independent regime for the future.
Built between the 1950s and 1980s, these structures are very
different from the official monument standards with their abstract forms and decentralized locations. Contrary to the “Socialist Realism” movement imposed by the Soviet Union, these monuments implemented a modern and simple style and followed a path contrary to the tradition of figurative war memorials, which dominated the world.
These structures, which were mostly built in areas where conflicts took place, were previously referred as “Medals of the Countryside,” and schools were organizing trips for them. Today, they are regarded as memories of Yugoslavia history or as undesired remnants of a ruined regime. In the war period after the collapse of Yugoslavia, although many monuments were destroyed or vandalized, certain examples continue to exist.