Bruce Lee Statue
In late 2005, a new statue was unveiled in Mostar’s central Spanish Square: a life-size bronze of Bruce Lee. Atop a concrete block, the Chinese-American actor and martial artist was depicted in a defensive position with one hand striking out and the other holding a set of nunchucks.
“Out of all the ethnic heroes and those who have a material interest in acting as victims, we have chosen Bruce Lee,” said Veselin Gatalo, whose youth group, Urban Movement Mostar, devised the statue. For Urban Movement, putting up a statue of Bruce Lee in Bosnia may have been an irreverent gesture, but it wasn’t an absurdist one. The group chose Lee as their subject because watching his films was a truly shared and cherished experience for young Yugoslavs. “Now they can rack their brains trying to decide whether he is he Bosniak, Croat, or Serb,” Gatalo said.
Urban Movement members and their collaborators, the De/construction of Monument Project of Sarajevo, chose the statue’s location carefully. Before the 1990s war in Bosnia, Mostar was a multinational town; its population of Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslim Bosniaks mingled freely. When fighting broke out in Mostar, however, the Spanish Square was the front line. Today, the square serves as a line of segregation, splitting Mostar into two nationally exclusive towns. With few exceptions, Croats live on the west side of the square, and Bosniaks live on the east (the Serb population has largely disappeared).
Urban Movement members unveiled the statue on November 25, 2005, which would have been Bruce Lee’s 65th birthday. The German government and other private donors funded the project, and Chinese and German officials attended the ceremony. After repeated acts of vandalism, however, the statue was put in storage. As of 2007, it had not been displayed again.
References
“Bosnia to unveil Bruce Lee statue.” BBC News, November 25, 2005.
External Link
“Bosnia unveils Bruce Lee bronze.” BBC News, November 26, 2005.
External Link
Prnjak, Hrvoje; translated by Anes Alic. “We Are All Bruce Lee.” Transitions Online, September 4, 2003
External Link
Raspudić, Nino. “Inauguration of the Bruce Lee Monument on November 26, 2005 in Mostar, Veliki Park.” The Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art, 2005.
External Link
Raspudić, Nino. “Bruce Lee Monument in Mostar.” 2005.
External Link
Discussions
New Site Added: Bruce Lee Memorial
We just added a new site to our collection here at the Memory and Justice Website: The Bruce Lee Statue is a life-size bronze of…
Is Mostar’s Bruce Lee statue an ironic conceptual art piece, a genuine memorial to mass atrocity, or both?
Many monuments in the former Yugoslavia amplify existing divisions and fail to provide for multi-ethnic collective remembrance. In Sarajevo…
Design Concepts for the Bruce Lee statue
The Bruce Lee statue, made by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Fijolic, was developed by the NGO Urban Movement Mostar in cooperation with the Sarajevo Center…
Related Resources
YouTube has, in six parts, Ozren Milharcic’s 2006 feature documentary on the Bruce Lee statue,“Enter the Dragon”. Mostar is most famous for the elegant stone bridge that connected the east and west sides of town for over 400 years. In 1993, the bridge was intentionally destroyed; in 2004, it was reborn in an impeccable reconstruction.
The BBC has a short documentary of the local music group Mostar Sevdah Reunion performing on the bridge as it is being rebuilt. Despite the bridge’s return, Mostar remains a fragmented town; in 2003, the International Crisis Group issued a report on how unity could be achieved. The De/construction of Monument Project has details of its other monuments and projects throughout the former Yugoslavia. The New York Times points out a trend of memorializing pop heroes in Serbia, including a Rocky Balboa statue and plans for a Tarzan statue.
Print
Herscher, Andrew
“Remembering and Rebuilding in Bosnia: An Architect Argues the Right Blend of Reconstruction Can Help Revive Multiculturalism.” Transitions, vol. 5 no. 3 (March 1998).
Print
Cole, Tim
Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler: How History is Bought, Packaged, and Sold. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Cole offers a critique of the commodification of the Holocaust through tourism, merchandising, and other commercial enterprises.
download file
Follow this site's updates via RSS
Location & Contacts
MostarBosnia-Herzegovina
lattitude/longitude: 43.343442, 17.805115
Previous Comments
Keyword Tags
- art
- countermonument
- reconciliation
- statue
- coexistence
- inclusive
- vandalized
Find More Sites:
- Next site: Sarajevo Roses
