Alixandra Fazzina
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995-1998
Dimensions: 213 mm x 155 mm
I first visited Bosnia in 1995 to work on a series of commissions as a war artist for the British Military, based in the Republika Srpska.
The notebook I have selected stems from a residency that coincided with the 1998 edition of “Open City of Art Srebrenik” as the festival reemerged for the first time after the war. I made impressions from some of the often badly deteri- orated photographs found amongst belongings as mass graves were unearthed in the region.
Working from my small sketches in a studio near Tuzla, I created huge render- ings that I recall being made from whatever I could get my hands on – discarded household emulsions and stolen anti-reflective tank paint.
I have little to take me back to that time now before I became a journalist. No notebooks. Only a few scribbles and details put down on scrap pieces of paper. One of the smaller sketchbooks that survives is here. A few pages of dark, sometimes despairing looking portraits of people that did not.
