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REPUBLIC OF SERBIA AT THE 18TH INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION IN VENICE 2023
IN REFLECTIONS, 6°27’48.81″N, 3°14’49.20″E
At the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, the Republic of Serbia will be represented by the work “IN REFLECTIONS, 6°27’48.81″N, 3°14’49.20″E”, authored by a young team of creators consisting of Iva Njunjić and Tihomir Dičić. The Venice Biennale opens on 20 May and runs until 26 November 2023. The project was chosen in a public competition by a jury consisting of Biljana Jotić (Council President), Dubravka Djukanović, Jelena Ivanović Vojvodić, Miljana Zeković, Snežana Vesnić, Ana Djurić, and Jelena Mitrović. The Commissioner of the Serbian Pavilion in 2023 is Slobodan Jović.
The project is implemented by the Museum of Applied Art on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and in cooperation with the Union of Architects of Serbia.
The project “In reflections…” directs attention to architecture created through international cooperation, viewing it as a potential and a resource for the future. The backbone of the exhibition “In Reflections…” is the Yugoslav Lagos International Fair and the policy of non-alignment that had a great influence on the society of the young independent states of the African continent in the sixties and seventies of the 20th century. These changes were also reflected in the process of transformation of African cities, in which Yugoslav architects played a notable role. The Non-Aligned Movement, as a specific international organization, was a promoter of politics embodied in anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, independence, emancipation and coexistence among states.
The authors of the exhibition visited Lagos in February.
Their encounter with the architecture of the Fair was aimed at understanding and activating the processes related to these spaces today. Through research, the authors strove to establish spatial and temporal reflections and, as a result, present an architectural identity unit. This totality ought to affirm the urgency and potential of the present moment in which we find ourselves in the context of the challenges of the future in which this architecture can be recognized as a resource.
A reflection is the symmetry of a sequence as it allows viewing from another angle and it is the moment of the past closest to the present. Repeating sequences in reflection forms an ellipse; it is a symbol of the global, a cycle, an inverted map of the world, a vault, an outer envelope formed around man.
The three sequences of the exhibition:
- Silent map – empty space.
- Archive – the former present. Archival drawings of the project that gradually fill the silent map.
- The Road to Lagos – the current present. Lagos travel videos.
The content of the exhibition will present the anatomy of the Lagos International Fair:
– The Fair as a city project
– The Fair as an architectural project
(ecosystem, a projection of a new social future, independence, a nucleus of future urbanism)
– The Fair as a project that forms man, as a part of awareness and direct experience.
Upon entering the pavilion, the visitors find themselves in an ellipse, a time-space map.
TEXTS AS PDF FILES
SELECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHS
Aerial shot, Lagos International Fair, the 1970s
Private archive of Ljiljana Bojović
Master plan, Lagos International Fair
Author: Zoran Bojović
Private archive of Ljiljana Bojović
A mold for casting triangular prefabricated panels that were the basic module for the construction of fair halls
Private archive of Ljiljana Bojović
Southeast Pavilion, Lagos International Fair, 2023
Author of the photograph: Tolulope Fatunbi
Central Pavilion, Lagos International Fair, 2023
Author of the photograph: Tolulope Fatunbi
PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE AUTHORS
