The painter, printmaker and teacher Aldin Popaja (born in 1971 in Jajce) can be described as a person living between two worlds. As a native of Bosnia and Herzegovina, he was profoundly affected by the human tragedy of the violent breakup of Yugoslavia during the first half of the 1990s. From 1990 to 1995 he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, then from 1995 to 2000 studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague at the painting studio of Prof. Pavel Nešleha, with whom he subsequently worked as a studio assistant. Popaja then continued in this position under Nešleha’s successor, Stanislav Diviš, with whom he still has a professional relationship today.

For thirty years, Popaja’s Bosnian identity has been closely contrasted with (and undoubtedly also enriched by) the culture of the Czech Republic. Following his personal experience of the brutality of military conflict, Popaja’s humanistic themes have an authenticity that stems from uncompromising reality. Whereas his artistic language was initially based on objective realism, since 2010 he has been focusing on the idea of the symbol, leading him to the abstracted expression of signs and geometric shapes or patterns. Colourism, in other words the use of colour as a constructive (and meaning-related) element of the pictorial composition, is fundamental to Popaja’s work.

At GASK, Aldin Popaja is exhibiting paintings from two series: Flying Stones (2023–24) and Stone Sleepers (2025). Both series relate to the phenomenon of stećci, or tombstones, created between the mid-12th and early 16th centuries, which are mostly found in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina. The uniqueness of these medieval limestone witnesses lies in the fact that they were created as a tradition common to the Bosnian, Catholic and Orthodox churches. The interconfessional character of stećci is most clearly evident in their visual symbolism, which transcends the boundaries of individual denominations (and even Christianity itself), such as the crescent moon, six-pointed star, spiral, rosette, lilies, vine leaves and grapes, birds, deer, horses, though also scenes from human life (hunting, chivalric tournaments and the well-known motif of a man with his right hand raised). In this spiritual inclusiveness (and especially in light of the often violent appropriation of identity symbolism in the modern era), Aldin Popaja finds a poignant testimony to the precious value of shared culture.

While in his earlier paintings, Popaja reflected on the legacy of stećci through the dynamic stylisation (and thus dramatic actualisation) of their shapes and motifs, over the past two years he has gradually and methodically veiled their visible form by layering over them with white strips or pathways based on the shape of a cross, which in this context can be understood as a crossroads or as the process of how memory is both stored and obscured. The pictorial composition thus appears as a tangible labyrinth suggesting the age-old complexity of the human individual’s journey in perceiving themself and the world around them. In these works, Aldin Popaja raises key questions about how the interpretation of symbols influences the understanding of personal and collective identity.