Marking the first anniversary of BIRN’s Reporting House exhibition, which explores media coverage of the war in Kosovo, a new installation celebrates the story of a mine whose rise and fall echoed that of Yugoslavia itself.
BIRN’s Reporting House exhibition in Prishtina marked its first anniversary on Wednesday with a new installation focusing on 100 years of mining at the giant Trepca complex.
Curated by Reporting House’s Gazmend Ejupi, it showcases minerals from Stanterg/Stari Trg, the oldest mine within the complex, which lies 55 km north of Kosovo’s capital.
Paper Gallery exhibition space in Prishtina working in the making of the installation commemorating 100 years of Trepca mining complex at the Reporting House. Photo: BIRN/Denis Sllovinja
Trepca donated the minerals on show, which were extracted 750 metres underground.
Miners work at the complex in tough conditions, often in high temperatures and without top-level protection. They have often gone on strike for better pay and working conditions.
Trepca’s rise and fall echoes that of the former Yugoslavia itself. While the country boomed, the complex enjoyed its glory days. When it started to break apart, the complex slid sharply downhill.
Photo: BIRN/Denis Sllovinja
“Developed by a British mining company in the 1920s, shortly after Serbia’s conquest of Kosovo, Trepca was taken over by Nazi Germany during World War II, until the Yugoslav Partisans gained control in 1944, beginning a new era of maximising basic extraction with little investment,” the exhibition explains.
In the 1960s, Trepca became the largest metallurgical processing plant in the former Yugoslavia, accounting for 70 per cent of its extraction production. It then employed 23,500 people, over 18,000 of them in Kosovo. The value of its exports peaked at some $120 million a year.
But the mine became a centre of political unrest when Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic moved to scrap Kosovo’s autonomy as a province in Yugoslavia.
In 1989, 1,200 miners staged an eight-day hunger strike underground in defence of Yugoslavia’s 1974 constitution, which had confirmed Kosovo’s autonomy. The strike was a totemic event, but it failed to halt the loss of autonomy – or Yugoslavia’s violent break-up.
The installation with minerals from the Trepca mining complex, and a photo from a Kosovo miners’ march in 1988 by photojournalist Hazir Reka in the background. Photo: BIRN/Xhorxhina Bami
One of the main photos in the exhibition, which explores media coverage of the war in Kosovo, shows the Trepca miners’ march in 1988. It was taken by Hazir Reka.
Yugoslavia’s violent collapse in the early-1990s and the changes made to companies in Kosovo by the Milosevic regime dealt huge blows to Trepca and complicated its ownership structure. Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 did not resolve matters.
Today, part of the complex lies in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo. Ownership was an area of dispute between Kosovo and Serbia, but it is now fully controlled by the Prishtina authorities.
Minerals donated by the Trepca mining complex for the installation. Photo: BIRN/ Denis Sllovinja
But, as the exhibition explains, the complex has not lost its contemporary relevance. “Trepca’s lead and zinc also feature in car batteries. These crystals – raw, striking, and luminous – are more than geological marvels,” it says.
“They are carriers of time, mute witnesses to struggle, their deeper timeline now converging with that of our recent decades of resistance and liberation.”
BIRN’s Reporting House exhibition opened in Prishtina on June 10, 2024 and since then has received 9,452 visitors.
NOTE: This article was amended on June 20, 2025 to clarify that the Trepca complex is now fully controlled by the Pristina authorities