Hills are flat in the dark Painting

In this painting I point to the fact that mass graves can often be those places of leisurely walks on which we are unaware of what lies below our feet. The painting refers to the events of 10th to 14th July 1995 in Srebrenica when 10,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys fled on foot to Tuzla through to escape incoming Serbian forces. The group was tracked and split up by the Serbian forces who killed those they captured. These men and boys in the forest plus those systematically murdered in Bratunac are buried in mass graves. The upper half of the painting interprets an illustration from Branko Ćopić’s story Hedgehog’s house also set in a forest which allegorically refers to the crisis of Yugoslavia’s exit from the Eastern Bloc, as well as to the impending threat of danger that followed this exit, that is the chase of Hedgehog through the forest by Fox, Wolf and Boar in the story. The lower half reworks a painting by the Mozambican artist and poet Malangatana Ngwenya.