Removed from their context, the strange concrete monuments dotting the landscape of the former Yugoslavia can seem abstract, inscrutable, even “alien.” Called “Spomeniks” after the Serbo-Croatian word for “monument,” the massive sculptures were virtually unknown to the rest of the world before photographer Jan Kempenaers documented them with these striking photographs between 2006 – 2009.

With renewed interest came the spread of misinformation, as some claimed the monuments were Communist propaganda. But in truth, they weren’t displays of patriotic nationalism; they each commemorated specific local events, often antifascist uprisings by local citizens. Though many of them were built by and for the victims of fascist regimes, they’re often seen online alongside Nazi monuments with no references to their true meaning.

Now, artists and activists from the countries that formerly made up Yugoslavia are fighting to clear up those misconceptions, and it’s important that we listen, says author Owen Hatherly at the Calvert Journal in a piece called “Concrete Clickbait.” 

In many cases, the monuments were commissioned, funded and chosen locally, and their aesthetic reflects a shift in Yugoslavia towards an interest in modernism. In an age of rising international neofascism, these monuments have much to tell us, argues Hatherly, and “deserve better than to be glimpsed for a few seconds on Tumblr.”

“For Tihana Pupovac, a major problem is also the depoliticized framing of the monuments. Left without any indication of what they commemorate, or even of who designed them, the results are ‘deliberately oblivious’ to the anti-fascist struggle that they commemorate, or to why the artists and communities thought they were appropriate – which, once, they evidently did. ‘If we want to revive whatever we think can be found of politics in the aesthetic of these monuments, we have to go past nostalgia and past the sheer fascination.”

“Because, again, these monuments in themselves are not that unique, what was unique was the lived historical experience of socialism. And I think this is what lacks crucially from Kempenaers’ work. You can see this in the way he presents his work in former Yugoslavia and his total oblivion of the problem of anticommunism. And this makes him incapable of grasping the situation with these monuments today’, which in Croatia, is currently acute, not only with many of the monuments crumbling, but with a right-wing administration openly nostalgic towards the Ustaše and intent on burying whatever anti-fascist legacy might remain today.”

Erasing the context of the monuments also erases the scale of the atrocities that occurred in Yugoslavia, activists argue.

“’Yugoslavia was the fourth highest country in Europe in terms of civilian casualties’ during the Second World War [says Pupovac], and was also, along with Greece, the only country with a resistance movement – the multi-ethnic, Communist-dominated Partisans – that was large and strong enough to liberate the country almost without help from the Allies. The federal Yugoslavia that came out of this broke with Stalin and the USSR in 1948, and instituted a ‘self-management socialism’ of extreme complexity and decentralization.”

“This is what disappears in the Spomenik photos – as she puts it, ‘our lived historical experience of a revolution becomes only a cultural artefact’. [Architect and writer Dubravka] Sekulic argues that ‘a better way to engage with these monuments would be to use them as a tool to re-connect to the near past in which, as a society, we did not see space only as a commodity.’”

Read more about the meaning and history behind specific monuments at The Calvert Journal.

Top: Spomenik #1 (Podgarić); all images by Jan Kempenaers

If you were to travel today through the area that was once Yugoslavia, you would come across some incredible massive objects that allow an unexpected look directly into the area’s past. Before dissolving into several smaller countries in the 1990s, Yugoslavia became home to a number of large-scale futuristic monuments.

(all images via: Human’s Scribbles)

The monuments, scattered all throughout the former Yugoslavia, were erected in the 1960s and 1970s by then-Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito. The Spomenik, which literally translates to “monuments,” are commemorative markers which immortalize WWII battle sites and locations of concentration camps.

Although the events marked by the monuments were dark, the sculptures themselves are utterly fantastical and otherworldly in nature. They were created by a number of different sculptors and architects, each piece imbued with a unique sense of cultural history.

The highly abstract objects take many unexpected shapes, appearing to represent giant models of microbes, huge crystals, deconstructed architecture, even alien plant life. The gigantic, mostly concrete, shapes reflect what was then a very strong, proud country. The form of each monument was selected for its symbolic meaning, having some sort of connection to the site on which it stands.

Throughout the 80s, the monuments were visited by millions of Yugoslavians, especially younger people who were pursuing their patriotic education. But when Yugoslavia dissolved, visits to the monuments dropped off almost entirely – and upkeep of the structures was abandoned.

Since the early 1990s, the monuments have been completely neglected. They sit there now, rising high above the surrounding trees and before majestic mountains, their historic origins becoming more obscured with every passing generation. Many of the desolate structures are crumbling into inscrutable ruins. Will these mysterious objects become the Stonehenges of the 20th century?

This series of Spomenik photos was created by Jan Kempenaers, a photographer who felt compelled to make the difficult journey through the Balkans to document the forgotten Yugoslavian giants. Using an old map of the monuments from 1975, he traveled to each of them in turn, capturing them in their current state of sad, melancholy glory.

Though the monuments themselves – the sculptures, completely removed of their meaning – are still quite striking, it is hard to ignore the pain and suffering that they represent. When they were erected, they were meant to bear witness to the atrocities that took place during WWII. Today, their meaning is nearly lost to time and political upheaval. Many incorrectly believe the structures to have been Communist propaganda material, but in fact the monuments were meant as tributes to the anti-fascist uprisers and everyone else who died in the second world war.

These lonely monoliths no longer immediately call to mind the approximately one million Yugoslavs killed in World War II. Over time, they have begun to look almost like natural parts of the landscape rather than the testament to human resilience and national pride they were meant to commemorate.

Insofar as it is possible to enjoy a work of art without knowing what it represents, stumbling across one of these monuments in the Balkans must be a truly awe-inspiring experience for foreign visitors. But we like to think that there are also some adventurous historians out there, still visiting the monuments to pay their respects to the fallen people they memorialize.