We encountered this unusual memorial while walking through Sarajevo and it commemorates the French military personnel who died while serving in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The work is Les Gardiens de l’Espace by the French sculptor Xavier Dambrine and consists of five distorted cast-iron figures arranged around a circular platform. It is not an especially comforting work, but it is a reminder of the tragedy that unfolded across Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s.
Seen from the other direction, the figures appear almost to be gathered in a circle while remaining isolated from one another. I’m not entirely sure what interpretation Dambrine intended, but this didn’t feel like a representation of military figures so much as one of more general sorrow. That ambiguity, at least to me, made the work all the more powerful.
Sarajevo has no shortage of monuments connected with the conflict, although this comparatively secluded memorial acknowledges a group of casualties who can be overlooked among the much greater suffering experienced by the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its location is also appropriate, standing opposite the French Embassy and beside a peaceful park.
The adjoining plaque lists the dead by year, beginning in 1992 and continuing beyond the end of the Bosnian War as French personnel remained involved in international peacekeeping operations. It records that the memorial was inaugurated by President Jacques Chirac on 7 April 1998 and erected at its present location on 12 April 2005. The plaque made the purpose of the work considerably clearer to me and turned what had initially seemed like an intriguing collection of figures into something much more sombre.