Skopje Urban Stories: Site-Specific Artistic Practices
Slavica Janešlieva, MFA, PhD
Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia

This presentation explores site-specific artistic interventions in public space in Skopje over the past two decades, focusing on artistic practices that address mobility, urban heritage, participation, sustainability and circularity within a city shaped by continuous political and symbolic transformation. From socialist Yugoslavia to the contemporary context of North Macedonia, Skopje represents a dynamic urban environment where questions of belonging, memory and the right to the city are constantly renegotiated.
Drawing on the recent project Skopje, Sensory City (2025, curated by Ana Frangovska), the presentation foregrounds non-institutional and participatory artistic practices that activate public space through embodied, sensory, and performative strategies. Early initiatives such as Redefining Public Spaces (2007) (NGO Kontrapunkt & Točka) demonstrate artistic mobility and knowledge exchange operating beyond institutional frameworks. Gjorgje Jovanovik’s Whistling Buildings addresses civic disengagement and the deterioration of shared urban responsibility, while Slavica Janešlieva’s Philanthropic Urges critically reflects on cultural sustainability and circular use of existing urban structures through the fictive reactivation of the former NaMA department store as a Collection of Contemporary Art.
Further examples include Igor Sekovski’s Visionary (2009), which anticipates the consequences of monument-driven urban policies; Aleksandar Spasoski’s sound intervention The Ship That Never Passed (2012), read as a metaphor for prolonged socio-political transition and restricted mobility; and later works by Dijana Tomić, Monika Moteska and Robert Jankuloski, Goce Nanevski, Svetlana Volić and others, which explore embodied memory, informal heritage, urban decay and resistance.
Collectively, these practices demonstrate how site-specific artistic interventions in Skopje function as tools for participatory engagement, sustainable reuse of urban space, and circular cultural production, offering alternative models for understanding heritage, collective consciousness and the role of art in shaping inclusive urban futures.

Image: Igor Sekovski, Visionary (Kim Il Sung), 2009, digital collage & print, 1.7 × 3 m (all rights reserved by Sekovski). In the background, the main square in Skopje, North Macedonia.