A Nuclear Bunker Comes In From the Cold as an Art Gallery


SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — The Yugoslav Army would have been hard pressed to find a more scenic spot to build a nuclear bunker.

Begun in the 1950s and completed in the late 1970s, the bunker is built into the green and lush hillside overlooking the tumbling Nevetra River, an hour from Sarajevo, near Konjic, in central Herzegovina, where it’s surrounded by conifer peaks and valleys. Costing more than $4.6 billion, it was intended as a shelter for President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and 350 elites of the armyin case of a nuclear attack.

The existence and location of the bunker remained top secret during and even after the wars that broke up Yugoslavia, and few people outside of the military were allowed into this cold war relic until now.

Thanks to the efforts of several artists, curators and art enthusiasts, the bunker has a renewed purpose. Since May it has been open for the contemporary-art exhibition “No Network: Time Machine Biennial,” a mainly site-specific project exhibiting 44 artists from 17 countries through Sept. 27. Edo Hozic, the director of the show, said he hoped that the D-O ARK Underground, the name for the bunker complex (using an acronym for the Atomic War Command), would become a permanent museum for contemporary art.

“I think this is the most expensive museum ever built in human history,” he said jokingly. “The options were that we could close the bunker or we could do like the Egyptians did with the Pyramids, or the Chinese with the Great Wall, to somehow preserve the bunker, and by putting artworks inside we can create an even more interesting space.”

The idea for the show grew out of a visit to Konjic three years ago by Mr. Hozic, who has managed museums and worked on Bosnian cultural projects, and Jusuf Hadzifejzovic, an artist from Sarajevo.

“We went to Konjic to work on a small art exhibition and were told about the bunker,” Mr. Hozic said. He added that they thought it could be a vehicle to make stronger connections among the countries that make up the ex-Yugoslavia as well as countries across central and eastern Europe.

Mr. Hozic said that organizing the show involved more than 500 meetings with the local government, the Ministry of Defense (which remains in charge of the bunker but has plans to decommission the site), regional governments, the European Union and international agencies.

To give the biennial a strong regional feel, the curators were chosen from Serbia and Montenegro. So once those curators — Petar Cukovic, from Montenegro, and Branislav Dimitrijevic, from Serbia — were on board, the creative component of the exhibition began to take shape.

The atmosphere of creativity they developed focused on more than the physical space of the bunker. The compound, designed in the shape of a horseshoe, is cooler than the temperature outside. It is musty, with a slight smell of mildew, and at the entrance of the bunker there are wet patches on the floor from condensation.

The curators also wanted to touch on what the bunker had meant historically and symbolically to Yugoslavia and its significance within the wider constructs of the cold war.

“The real perversion is that they built something over the decades that was expensive, that was sheltering, that was stable enough to survive an atomic war,” said Marko Lulic, a Viennese artist of Serbian and Croatian descent, speaking of the bunker’s original builders, “but then a civil war happened from within, which was something an expensive shelter could not help them escape from.”

Mr. Lulic said his work “Istambul/Istanbul,” a plaquelike piece that is on view outside the bunker and that maps out several hidden structures that were scattered across Yugoslavia during the cold war, is a figurative attempt to excavate these secret places.

An installation piece by the Estonian artist Villu Jaanisoo, “Fog Is a Cloud That Is Related to Land,” made of hundreds of long utility lights that hang from the ceiling in one of the maintenance rooms, takes advantage not only of the physical but also of the olfactory aspects of the room, which is filled with industrial tanks reeking of fuel oil.

“This space already has these sensations,” Mr. Dimitrijevic, the curator, said. “My first reaction was that it was stupid to make an art show here because it is such an amazing place, how could you add to it? But after a few visits I saw how all these smells and sounds can help create the exhibition.”

The show also tackles the region’s more recent past. Mladen Miljanovic, who lives in Banja Luka, details in his video and installation piece the day he took his military oath. In a corner of a room near the entrance to the bunker are a table, a chair, a helmet and a giant poster of the artist — whose body is partly erased — in his military uniform accompanied by his parents. A video loop shows the send-off party for Mr. Miljanovic as he headed off for national service.

Another powerful installation is by Radenko Milak, another Bosnian artist, who has painted, with slight variations in colors, a series of reproductions of the American photojournalist Ron Haviv’s 1992 photograph of a Serb soldier about to kick an injured woman in Bijeljina at the beginning of the war. Mr. Milak’s piece questions the power of the news media and asks what responsibility a journalist has when bearing witness to the horrors of war.

The exhibition has posed logistical problems. Bosnian soldiers based at the bunker have been charged with guiding visitors, meaning that anyone who wants to stop and reflect a bit longer on a piece can get left behind in the echoing corridors. It is also difficult to find information because the tourism authority in Konjic sets tour times and organizes transport to the bunker, but it does not have a Web site.

Mr. Lulic, however, said that it was amazing that the project happened at all.

“I think one should not forget it is still a military complex,” he said. “That is the advantage and disadvantage of a country in transition. It’s chaotic, but then maybe it’s easier to do a show like this than in a more regulated country. You could never do a biennial in Fort Knox.”

Mr. Hozic said the plans to create a permanent contemporary-art museum inside the bunker would allow many of the pieces in the current show to make up part of the collection. If it does happen, it would no doubt be a welcome addition to the contemporary art scene in Sarajevo, which is struggling to survive.