The Heroinat Memorial

The Heroinat Memorial is one of the few tangible reminders in the city which portrays women’s experience and contribution to the history of the country. Consisting of twenty-thousands pins, Heroinat represents the number of survivors of sexual violence during the 1999 Kosovo War. The face contoured by the pins has a two-fold meaning, it depicts a survivor and a war heroine.  While the face does not fall into heroic iconography, the memorial as a whole fails to acknowledge women’s heterogenous experience and does not feature individual qualities. The memorial was unveiled on the sixteenth anniversary of Pristina’s liberation June 12, 2015 and stirred a debate among feminist activists who believed that this commemorative practice reduced women’s experiences.