Post-war memory is never neutral. In the Balkans, the wars of the 1990s left deep wounds, not only in the lives of those who experienced them, but also in the ways societies remember or choose to forget their past. In many post-war states, official memorials often focus on male soldiers, heroic sacrifice, and ethnically defined victimhood, leaving women’s experiences largely invisible.
However, women have consistently challenged this silence. Through various forms of activism, they have transformed memory into a tool of resistance. They have reclaimed public spaces, reshaped narratives, and insisted that women’s experiences, especially those of sexual violence, be recognized as a central part of war history.
An extraordinary example of this feminist approach to memory is Thinking of You,a public art installation from 2015 by Kosovar artist Alketa Xhafa Mripa, created in collaboration with the Kosovo Women’s Network. The project collected more than 5,000 dresses donated by women from across Kosovo, each representing a survivor of sexual violence during the war. These dresses were installed in the national football stadium in Prishtina, transforming a space traditionally associated with celebration and masculinity into a site of remembrance, solidarity, and visibility.
By occupying the national stadium, Thinking of You, Thinking of You delivered a powerful message: women’s stories must be at the center of national memory. The installation was not merely a symbolic gesture, but also an act of civic participation. Thousands of women contributed their garments, each carrying personal meaning, some accompanied by handwritten notes such as “This skirt hid a story for fifteen years.” Through this process, the boundary between artist, activist, and public dissolved, creating a shared memorial where individual grief became collective recognition.
For the artist, the project was about giving voice to victims of sexual violence without re-traumatizing them. She stated, “I wanted to give visibility to those women who had been silenced for so long, to bring into the open what society wanted to hide.” The installation attracted national and international attention, highlighting a group whose suffering had long been marginalized in Kosovo’s collective memory.
Thinking of You, challenged entrenched hierarchies of remembrance. Dominant post-war narratives in Kosovo centered on male fighters and heroic sacrifice, leaving women survivors in the shadows. By filling a football stadium with thousands of dresses, Xhafa Mripa reshaped the geography of memory, placed women’s experiences at the center, and demanded that survivors of sexual violence be included in the country’s collective history.
The impact of the project extended beyond Kosovo. It has been restaged in various parts of the world, including The Hague and Strasbourg, linking local silence to global campaigns against sexual violence in conflict. These restagings demonstrate the adaptability of symbolic art as a tool for recognition where formal mechanisms often fail.
In a region where the memory of war is often selective and women’s experiences have been marginalized or instrumentalized, Thinking of You, offers an alternative. It shows that remembering can be an act of resistance, solidarity, and transformation. Through her work, Alketa Xhafa Mripa reminds us that women are not only survivors, but also active shapers of memory and calls for justice.
