Shaping Revolutionary Memory: The Production of Monuments in Socialist Yugoslavia
Book presentation and discussion with the editors Sanja Horvatinčić and Beti Žerovc
The conversation is moderated by Lujo Parežanin, independent researcher, journalist, and musician.
Organized by: Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, and Igor Zabel Association, Ljubljana
The publication presents a comprehensive overview of the vast production of monuments in socialist Yugoslavia (1945–1991) dedicated to the antifascist People’s Liberation Struggle in the Second World War and the socialist revolution.
Since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, these monuments have been subject to various fates, from neglect and physical destruction to global fame generated by the high-modernist visual appeal of a number of them. But the full scope, wide-ranging diversity, and complex context of Yugoslav monument making, including its various contradictions, have remained largely unexplored.
The book offers a thorough and interdisciplinary exploration of this phenomenon and a rich visual material to examine its key characteristics and specificities: What memorial practices and commemorative traditions preceded the development of monument-making in socialism? Who commissioned these monuments and how did Yugoslav cultural and memory politics influence their production? Who were their authors and what defined their formal and typological features? How was Yugoslav monument production related to comparative efforts abroad? What commemorative practices developed around monuments? How is this legacy evaluated and received today, both in the post-Yugoslav successor states and internationally?
More: https://www.archivebooks.org/shaping-revolutionary-memory/
Sanja Horvatinčić is a Research Associate at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, Croatia. Her research focuses on the production of monuments and remembrance culture in socialist Yugoslavia, as well as on heritage and memory politics in the post-socialist context. She is currently a researcher at the project “Globe_EXCHANGE. Models and Practices of Global Cultural Exchange and Non-Aligned Movement”, and the coordinator of the project “Heritage from Below | Drežnica: Traces and Memories 1941-1945”. Along with Beti Žerovc, she is the co-author of the book Shaping Revolutionary Memory: The Production of Monuments in Socialist Yugoslavia (2023, Igor Zabel Association, Ljubljana, and Archive Books, Berlin).
Beti Žerovc is a Slovene art historian and art theorist. She teaches at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Her areas of research are visual art and the art system since the mid-nineteenth century, with a focus on their role in society. Žerovc co-edited exhibition catalogues The Lives of Monuments: World War II and public monuments in Slovenia (2018, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana) and On the Brink: The Visual Arts in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–1941) (2019, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana). Her last book When Attitudes Become the Norm: The Contemporary Curator and Institutional Art was published in 2015 and reprinted in 2018 (Igor Zabel Association, Ljubljana, and Archive Books, Berlin). Along with Sanja Horvatinčić, she is the co-author of the book Shaping Revolutionary Memory: The Production of Monuments in Socialist Yugoslavia, (2023, Igor Zabel Association, Ljubljana, and Archive Books, Berlin).
