The exhibition “Witnesses” by Bosnian artist Nusret Pašić, opened as part of the WARM Festival 2026, for the first time in Sarajevo presents a selection of seven of Pašić’s works created during the siege of Sarajevo and one immediately after the 1992-95 war.
Sculptures, objects and installations mutually create a space of personal experience and collective memory, which bears witness to the destruction, but also to the existence of art despite the war.
The exhibition was opened in the Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Sarajevo, and includes seven works created during the war and a stained glass window that was first exhibited at the Event Horizont exhibition in the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 1996.
In all works, elongated verticals of human figures are primary, which, depositing experiences and memories, grow and elongate, retaining from the tribute of the human body a head with living mirror eyes. The exhibition also featured video documentation of the installation of the works during and after the war.
Nusret Pašić, a long-time professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, at the painting department (until 2018), was vice-dean of the Academy from 2002 to 2005 and dean from 2007 to 2011. He is one of the founders of the Obala Art Center and the author of the exhibition “Witnesses of Existence 1992” in a series of eight exhibitions that were staged in the ruined cinema in Sutjeska period 1992-93, and after which the group exhibition that characterized the art scene in Sarajevo during the war was named.
The exhibition “Witnesses” set up in the Gallery of the Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts from July 6 to 26 was realized in cooperation between the WARM festival and the Ministry of Veteran Affairs of the Canton of Sarajevo and the University of Sarajevo. The curator of the exhibition is Lejla Hodžić.
