Don´t let happen Guernica in Kosova, 1992, Aktion, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Sammlerfamilie FILOART and Student Group

This Project, made and initiated by Sammlerfamilie FILOART, later evolved into a collaboration for a performance/installation with a group of artists and students who had been expelled from Kosova due to repression. It serves as a example of the intersection of art and activism during a time of political instability. The artists and students, forced to leave their homeland because of political repression, found in art a channel to raise their voices and highlight the precarious situation in Kosova. Amidst the collapse of former Yugoslavia and escalating ethnic tensions, these individuals chose to harness their creative energies to foster critical reflection on the events unfolding in their homeland.

Not only did they shed light on the immediate impacts of the conflict, but they also highlighted the potential developments and implications for the Western world.
 The intervention of this group of exiled artists and students in 1992, including the powerful work Don’t Let Happen Guernica in Kosova, was of symbolic significance. It not only urged viewers to engage with the events in Kosova but also called for broader solidarity and awareness of human rights violations and cultural loss in the region.

The reason the Sammlerfamilie FILOART, chose the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin (The Neue Nationalgalerie was designed by architect and last Bauhaus director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) as the venue for their performance/Installation is that they view art institutions like the Neue Nationalgalerie as 'embassies of the artists.' They see these institutions as spaces where the concerns and creative expressions of artists can reach a audience, serving as platforms that represent their works and ideas. For the group, the Nationalgalerie Berlin was not just an exhibition space, but a symbolic space that fosters a dialogue between art and society.

 The invocation of Picasso’s Guernica in the title and spirit of the work creates a compelling and deliberate parallel. Picasso’s 1937 masterpiece was itself a response to the horrors of war, particularly the aerial bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War—an act that symbolized the brutality of modern warfare against civilians. Guernica became not only a visual outcry against fascist violence but also an enduring icon of anti-war resistance in the 20th century.

In Don’t Let Happen Guernica in Kosova, Sammlerfamilie FILOART, similarly employ the language of protest through symbolic imagery and performative urgency. Like Picasso, they do not depict violence directly for the sake of representation, but rather construct a space of ethical witnessing—channeling suffering, injustice, and loss into an artwork that demands civic response. The echo of Guernica in the Kosova context is more than metaphor; it is a warning, a plea to history not to repeat itself through passive inaction. It transfers the trauma of one historical moment into another, insisting on recognition and intervention.

The performance/installation Don’t Let Happen Guernica reflects struggles for identity, justice, and survival. This intervention served as a bridge between past and present, between local realities and global discourses. Through this creative expression, they succeeded in generating resonance far beyond the borders of Kosova, directing much-needed attention to the complex challenges and suffering of the people in the region. As with Picasso’s Guernica, the work continues to remind us that art is not merely a witness to catastrophe, but also a force that can shape collective memory and moral consciousness.