To Be a Falcon Is to Be a Yugoslav
Exhibition Design, Design Research


The project To Be a Falcon Is to Be a Yugoslav at the Museum of Yugoslav History marks the museum's curatorial focal transition, reflecting the shift towards the legacy of the pre-WWII Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This exhibition focuses on the period from 1919 to 1941. 


Discipline: Exhibition Design, Design Research
Client: Museum of Yugoslav History, Belgrade
Authors: Aleksa Bijelović, Milica Maksimović — Petokraka

Associates: Ana Makragić, Bogdan Maksimović



Beyond typical museological displays, it was to fuse documentary and artistic perspectives, using artefacts and producing objects/installations as material manifestations of imagined memories, collective and personal, tapping into the realm of the era's conditions and the state's national(ist) schedules, referring to the mass-mobilisation and display of ideas of 'nurturing a physically healthy and morally strong nation.' 1

The artefacts are compiled from various funds from local museums and private memorabilia collections and are, as such, presented as recently excavated material (and intellectual) remains, a non-existing archaeological site, and laid out in impromptu glass cabinets, almost on a ground-level, with each spot properly marked and flagged.

Across the room, over a massive barrier, a bordering wall, spread out are the other remains, newly produced ghost object installations of culture, evocative, elusive, dreamy, macabre, stripped of any pigment and patina, recalling and probing the curatorial intent and narrative.


Creative Practice — Petokraka

In Belgrade, Serbia
and Perth, Western Australia

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