Street Arts Festival Mostar, 2025
Written by Krešimir Golubić – Leon GSK/SAFMo
Published on April 8th, 2026
I have truly beautiful memories connected to Mostar. I remember visiting the historic city center, the Neretva River, and the iconic dives from the Old Bridge. With the destruction of the Old Bridge during the unfortunate wars of the 1990s, in a way the memory and beauty of my visit to the city were also shattered. As the bridge was rebuilt after the war — that masterpiece of Ottoman architecture under UNESCO protection —
Mostar is a city that enchants at first sight with postcard beauty — stone streets, the turquoise Neretva, and the monumental Old Bridge — yet beneath the tourist scenery it still carries layers of complex political and social reality.
Mostar is a city that enchants at first sight with postcard beauty — stone streets, the turquoise Neretva, and the monumental Old Bridge — yet beneath the tourist scenery it still carries layers of complex political and social reality. More than three decades after the war, the city functions somewhere between the symbolism of reconciliation and the everyday divisions visible in institutions, education, and sports. At the same time, Mostar is also a space of strong local energy and cultural initiative that transcends political blockages. It is precisely this energy that gave birth to the Mostar Street Arts Festival, which in 2025 held its fourteenth edition.
The festival organizer, the Rezon Association, through years of collaboration with numerous partners and friends, represents precisely that backbone — a group of people moving forward who want the city to live and develop in a much better direction than some others might prefer. By that I primarily mean politics, from which everything begins. Politics that is often created outside Mostar, yet ultimately paid for by ordinary people. As it was in the 1990s.
The legacy of war is still quite visible on the streets of Mostar — unrepaired facades, shrapnel scars — but also something we sincerely dislike: hatred expressed through football-fan graffiti and murals. This is something that in recent years has affected other cities across the region and Europe as well, destroying the nobility of sport.
However, SAFMo has managed to initiate change and transform the urban image of the city — the postcard now being sent to the world shows different scenes. The festival has left a powerful mark on Mostar through nearly two hundred painted murals and artistic initiatives over the years. We will mention just some of the artists who have participated in Mostar: Lady Aiko, Erik Burke, Mark Jenkins, Lady Pink, NeSpoon, Ememem…
For its 2025 edition, the festival presented a diverse artistic program.
Jan Vormann and his “Fantastic World”
Four works by Jan Vormann, composed of LEGO bricks donated by children and parents from Mostar, were among the most striking parts of the festival. His interventions, whether we want to admit it or not, directly take us back to childhood and bring a smile to our faces. They clearly answer the question of why street art is so appealing to a wide audience.
The Greek artist who gifted Mostar the festival’s largest mural
Greek artist Dimitris Taxis, known simply as TAXIS, left an indelible mark on Mostar with his monumental mural on the wall of the Japanese School in the Centar 2 neighborhood. This work not only visually marked the city but also symbolized the festival’s expansion beyond its traditional boundaries, making Mostar an even larger and more recognizable open-air gallery.
The foundation “Together for Rivers,” while supporting the festival and at the same time preserving artistic freedom, reminded us of the importance of protecting natural resources, developing environmental awareness, and persistently investing in the education of every new generation.
The foundation “Together for Rivers,” while supporting the festival and at the same time preserving artistic freedom, reminded us of the importance of protecting natural resources, developing environmental awareness, and persistently investing in the education of every new generation. Such an approach to collaboration demonstrates that art and ecology can intertwine harmoniously into a powerful social message.
For the Mostar mural, TAXIS chose the motif of the Neretva River, deeply rooted in the local community, creating a strong connection between art and the audience.
Penique Productions — a contemporary meditative transformation of space
The Spanish collective Penique Productions presented its recognizable artistic practice through two impressive interventions in Mostar, with the support of the Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation. Their work combines contemporary artistic philosophy, minimalism, and modernist aesthetics with interactive and meditative elements, creating an environment that transcends functional space and transforms it into an experience of contemplation and emotional transformation.
At the City Bath in Mostar, Penique installed a piece that transformed the interior into a contemporary meditative space, using light, reflections, and geometric structures.
At the City Bath in Mostar, Penique installed a piece that transformed the interior into a contemporary meditative space, using light, reflections, and geometric structures. Visitors were able to experience the space as a visual and auditory environment where architecture, color, and the movement of light together created a sense of introspective transformation. The installation attracted a large number of visitors, demonstrating how contemporary art can reinterpret and revitalize cultural spaces, including those with a strong historical identity.
Slaven Kosanović LUNAR
In addition to meetings of local and international artists, the festival hosted Croatian artist LUNAR, who, alongside his mural, also gifted the festival audience a DJ set. A special musical highlight was prepared by Esma and Murat Ertel from Turkey — members of the well-known band Baba Zula.
With his recognizable style and the motif of stylized cats acting as his alter ego, Lunar enriched one of the walls in the city center. His expression is characterized by clean lines, strong color, and graphic clarity derived from graffiti tradition, but with a pronounced illustrative and almost comic-like poetics. His artistic signature successfully bridges the boundary between graffiti heritage and contemporary public art.
This year also included a lineup of no less important authors working in somewhat smaller formats: Ruin from Austria, an exceptionally talented graffiti writer, with two murals near the Old Playground; Repo from Spain, with an international interpretation of the Herzegovinian pomegranate motif; and Paste Up Warsaw from Poland, a collective that transformed an unattractive surface into an exhibition space with several hundred selected artworks by artists whose designs are part of their international collection. In addition, a group of graffiti writers — including Raiko from Mostar, Enok from Novi Sad, and Casio from Zagreb — refreshed city passages with their vibrant expressions.
The fourteenth edition of SAFMo closed with the unique multimedia performance “Dreaming for a Future with Bogdanović” at the Partisan Memorial Cemetery.
The fourteenth edition of SAFMo closed with the unique multimedia performance “Dreaming for a Future with Bogdanović” at the Partisan Memorial Cemetery. Directed by Austrian artist and festival co-founder Peter Lorenz, the project brought together artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina: Billain, Orhan Maslo Oha, Amela Darling, Anja Rikalo, Anita Kapraljević, Irfan Brković, and Armin Ćosić. Each contributed through their own artistic expression — music, soundscapes, or light interventions — together shaping an audiovisual act in which the monument space itself became the main protagonist.
The performance recalled the vision of architect Bogdan Bogdanović, according to which a monument is not merely a memorial but also a place of imagination, creative reflection, and spatial transformation.
“Besides the historical context of the monument’s creation, this masterpiece must be viewed beyond ideological associations. It is primarily a work of art, it speaks the universal language of beauty and belongs to everyone.
“Besides the historical context of the monument’s creation, this masterpiece must be viewed beyond ideological associations. It is primarily a work of art, it speaks the universal language of beauty and belongs to everyone. All previous events related to the memorial heritage of the Partisan Cemetery and the life’s work of Bogdan Bogdanović — fortunate or unfortunate, planned or accidental — seemed like steps leading precisely to this moment, which is indeed a step toward social catharsis,” emphasized artist Maja Rubinić.
SAFMo was realized with the support of the Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation, the Dinarica Association, the Together for Rivers Foundation, the Austrian Cultural Forum, Zukunftsfonds, the Embassy of Spain in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the City of Mostar, the Mostar Tourist Board, the OSCE Mission to BiH, El Grito, Sportradar, Duga Tehna, Ledo, Lapis, and many other individuals and friends of the Rezon Association — the SAFMo platform.
Text and photographs: Krešimir Golubić – Leon GSK / SAFMo
Tourist add-on:
If you find yourself in Mostar and would like to learn more about the city’s street art scene, we definitely recommend a local guide.
The tour is led by a local guide — an architect who will tell you much more than just the story of street art.
Written by Kresimir Golubic (Leon GSK)