Across the Western Balkans, hammams once served as more than bathhouses. Under their domes, social layers, religions, and everyday politics converged, informal spaces of dialogue and shared urban life that cut across the divisions that still define the region today. Most of those spaces have since been abandoned, privatised, or left to ruin.
Conceived by artists Siniša Ilić and Bojan Đorđev, the project unearths forgotten or suppressed narratives of co-existence embedded in hammam architecture, asking how these spaces might reimagine contemporary public life as a site of encounter, change, and collective experience.
On 30 May in Belgrade, the project came to life with a public event that brought together participants, artists, and audiences around a shared act: a collective performance of dome construction, symbolically restoring the hammam as a space of care and meeting. The event also featured an artistic travelogue through the stories of Balkan hammams and the presentation of a newly produced illustrated booklet for drawing and reflection. The event was produced by Udruženi umetnički rad (Belgrade) in co-production with Lokomotiva (Skopje) and Lumbardhi Foundation (Prizren), in collaboration with the Centre for Cultural Decontamination. A cross-regional team of eleven collaborators worked alongside the authors.
The performative travelogue continued in Pristina and Skopje in June, bringing the region together in a shared act of memory, encounter, and understanding.
The project demonstrates how artistic practice can make shared heritage legible and relevant, transforming architectural ruins into living questions about what public space means, who it belongs to, and how communities across borders might imagine it together.
Project Hamam Internacionala – Under the Domes is supported through the Culture for Democracy programme, implemented by Heartefact Fund and co-financed by the Swiss Government, as part of Switzerland's commitment to supporting social cohesion, tolerance and democracy in Serbia through artistic and cultural activities.
