Sadko Hadžihasanović: War and Piece Exhibit

Borrowing from the title of Leo Tolstoy’s historical chronicle of the Napoleonic Wars and the 1812 invasion of Russia, Sadko Hadžihasanović’s War and Piece is a similarly fragmented view of his homeland in the wake of war. Following the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s; Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina engaged in a bitter civil war prompted by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Drawing on his own experiences and observations as an émigré from Bosnia during this period, Hadžihasanović’s paintings contrast idyllic Arcadian depictions of daily life in this still largely rural region, with the presence of United Nations peacekeepers and an abundance of firearms: ‘piece’ being American slang for a handgun. From the artist’s point of view, the domestic is never far removed from the martial. Portraits of friends and townspeople are shown posing with long guns. Unarmed soldiers are depicted relaxing while gathering to eat. Masterful paintings on copper capture bathers idling along the banks of the river Una. The uneasy tensions and contradictions depicted are perhaps best illustrated by the artist’s hand-drawn animations, including Kids with Guns, named after a song by the pop band Gorillaz, in which children play war, but it is not entirely clear whether they carry handguns or water pistols. Hadžihasanović’s work is at once a love letter to his homeland and a sobering reflection on the curious nature of postwar peace in the region.

Artist biography

Sadko Hadžihasanović studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and earned his MFA at the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, before emigrating to Canada in 1993. Since then, he has exhibited in numerous exhibitions in public galleries and artist-run spaces across Canada. His work is currently the focus of a concurrent retrospective War and Piece 1984–2024, at the Contemporary Gallery of Cultural Centre, Pančeva, Serbia. He is the recipient of multiple visual arts grants from the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts. Sadko Hadžihasanović is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.