Starting at 18:00, on August 30, the International Day of the Disappeared, we invite you to join us at the Plateau above the underground parking (near George Bush Square), Prishtina, where the “Tree of Lives” memorial will be inaugurated, a space of remembrance dedicated to all the Persons Disappeared by force as a Consequence of the War in Kosovo.
Tree of Lives is a memorial in the form of a tree trunk with roots. Seemingly simple, a tree trunk, cut yet still standing, with its roots exposed and anchored in the ground. At once a fragment and a whole, the work embodies an uncertain temporality; the suspended condition of the persons disappeared by force as a consequence of the war in Kosovo 1998–2000. Artists Dea Gjinovci and Armand de Benoist de Gentissart conceived the trunk not as a symbol of closure but of interruption, a wound in the continuity of life and lineage. The memorial is made of concrete and wood, weather-resistant and locally sourced. The roots, cast in concrete, reveal what is usually hidden: the genealogical lines that sustain the living, even as they carry the weight of absence. Visitors may sit in the carved spaces within these roots, feeling for a moment held by the structure, sharing silence, presence, and also absence.
“Tree of Lives” seeks to move away from the idea of an ending, proposing instead a continuous engagement. In this sense, it is not only commemorative but also performative: it creates encounters between the living and the missing, between visitors and families, between individual memory and collective responsibility. The work rests on the idea that mourning never ends, but continues as a form of relationship. The names inside the trunk become not only a list but a litany of memory, where meaning lies in repetition, in touch, and in encounter, affirming that memory cannot be confined to the past, but must be lived and inhabited.
This memorial was realized by the Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo in partnership with the Missing Persons Resource Center and was supported by the European Union Office in Kosovo and Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.
