Don't Dream Dreams (2023)

The installation Don’t Dream Dreams relates and explores two significant historical events from the late 19th and 20th centuries and how they interact with contemporary politics and the current European geopolitical landscape, melding past and present. As a result of the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was granted the authority to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina indefinitely, taking on its military defence and civil administration.

After the series of battles, the onslaught ended with the fall of Sarajevo.

On 6th October 1908, the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary announced its annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

About a century later, in December 1992 Lord David Owen, a British politician and diplomat during his visit to Sarajevo which endured 1425 days of the siege declared “Don’t, don’t, don’t live under this dream that the West is going to come in and sort this problem out. Don’t dream Dreams…”

Lord David Owen’s “Don’t Dream Dreams” advice was given to the Bosnians as they battled the mass murders and ethnic cleansers, and indicated war crimes hoping for Western intervention to stop the war and terror.

The neon inscription Don’t Dream Dreams is placed against the backdrop that leans on an oil painting from 1878 by three artists: Adolf Obermüller (landscape), Alexander Ritter von Bensa der Jüngere (staffage) and Alexander Kaiser (architecture). The painting depicts the first military campaign for the establishment of Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its northern camp.

Combining the relevant and characteristic artistic mediums of the 19th and 20th centuries, the work juxtaposes historically accurate elements with profound symbolic significance. The work questions the relationship between the past and the present, explores the political relations between the “centre” and “periphery”, and critically examines/analyses the New Imperialism and contemporary Western Diplomacy.
The installation Don’t Dream Dreams highlights the complexity of the ideas and facts while encouraging discussion through a common understanding of diverse experiences.