By any stretch of the imagination, Alma Suljevic, 40-something with bleached blond hair and sporting orange lipstick, didn't look like a former soldier who had served in the Bosnian Army. “I didn't really want to join,” she told me as we drank coffee in the lounge of the Sarajevo Artist Center. “But what else could I do? They were shelling my city and my neighborhood.” During the war, Alma worked in a medical clinic that provided care to soldiers and civilians traumatized by the war. One day a young girl, felled by a sniper's bullet, was brought to the clinic, where she died in Alma's arms. It is a moment seared into her memory and one that has deeply affected her art. “Before the war, my art wasn't political,” she tells me. “But now, what else could it be? I feel I have to say something.”

Alma, like many other Bosnian artists, uses her art to reclaim spaces stolen by the war. One of her most acclaimed installations, “Annulling Truth,” decries the fact that, even today, millions of land mines still litter the fields and mountains of Bosnia. The installation consists of several large maps of local minefields on which she has scrawled her traumatic memories of the war. Alma invites viewers to walk on the maps and talk about their reactions to the installation. If they wish, they can purchase an 8-by-10-inch color lithograph called “Certificat,” or “certificate,” depicting two hands cradling a PM1 anti-personnel mine.